


A Long Minute

by stayicy



Series: Rocks in the Road [1]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, BAMF Natasha Romanov, I'm Bad At Tagging, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark Friendship, POV Natasha Romanov, Spoilers, They deserved better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-02-18 12:53:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 48,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18699988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stayicy/pseuds/stayicy
Summary: Footsteps.Even all the time – weeks? Months? Years? – she’s spent here don’t inhibit her instincts one bit. In a split second, she’s on her feet, hands in fists up by her chest, ready to fight.They drop to her side when Tony Stark walks through the door.“Agent Romanoff. You miss me?”~Or, Natasha and Tony have what they have when they have it. It's...not horrible.That doesn't mean they'll stop trying to get home.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know on here her last name is listed as Romanov, but in the MCU they list her as Romanoff, so that’s what we’re going with. Hope you enjoy and don’t cry as much as I did in the theater. Also, I’d recommend looking up the deleted scene with Natasha and Steve from Civil War after Peggy’s funeral where she tells him about looking for her parents. Not necessary to understand this story at all, but it is referenced.
> 
> Obvious Endgame spoilers ahead. Enjoy.

Natasha had always loved being alone, but she hated being lonely.

In the Red Room, Madame B had set up one large single room to be shared by fifty girls. As the years went by, with the help of the stronger girls, the total number of girls was reduced to forty. Then thirty. When Natasha was six, she personally contributed to the reduction by killing the girl who slept on the bed next to her. It was her first time. It would not be her last.

When Natasha was eight, Madame B quickened the process. Every night a different girl was given an order to kill someone else. Every morning, there was one less girl.

Some of the girls avoided attempting to kill Natasha all together. Many attempted to kill her. All of them failed.

By the time she was nine, only ten girls including herself remained. Madame B let them all live, let them sleep in a big bedroom with forty empty beds, some still with bloodstains on the covers. Natasha had never been alone for more than two minutes in her entire life until her first mission when she was ten.

But she constantly felt lonely.

The first time she feels like she belongs somewhere is after Agent Barton – Clint, he insisted – decides not to kill her in Budapest and instead they hijack her mark’s car – whom she still managed to kill, by the way, because she may be going rogue and betraying the Red Room but she still has never failed a mission and doesn’t plan to make her last one an incompletion – and drive to the Buda Castle and watch the sky change from pitch black to different shades of red and orange, not unlike her natural hair that she hasn’t seen in months because this mission had required her to dye it dark brown.

By the time the sky is blue, the Red Room has declared Natalia Alianovna Romanova a traitor to the state, and orders for any associates of theirs to kill her on sight.

Many try. None succeed.

~

Even with half the universe gone and reduced to ash, Natasha doesn’t feel lonely.

She truly doesn’t. Steve sleeps at the compound most of the time, just down the hall from her suite, and she’s taken on a sort of leadership rule – if only Yelena could see you now, Talia – with people – and raccoons, no matter how many times he tries to deny it – all over the galaxy. She’s too busy to feel lonely. She’s not that selfish. Other people lost a lot more than she did.

Still, every time she opens her vanity drawer and sees the silver arrow necklace Clint and Laura had made for her for Christmas the year they saved New York from Loki – or Thanos, or the Chitauri; she doesn’t think about it too hard or else she gets a headache – her heart clenches in her chest and she feels the loneliness settle on her shoulders because the first people to ever ask her her favorite color – who the hell even cares about something so trivial – are dead or killing and—

There’s an unsettling large amount of crazed Thanos-supporters who somehow made it within fifty kilometers of Wakanda’s southern border. The ring from the call from Okoye snaps Natasha out of whatever dangerous trance she’s in. She can’t afford to lose it right now.

She can’t afford to lose it, ever.

~

“Tell them yourself,” she tells Clint, and she has never meant anything more in her life. She turns and sprints and falls. Damn those explosion arrows, and damn Stark for ever suggesting Clint needed them.

Clint gives her a quick triumphant look, the same one he would give her whenever he won in chess, and leaps over the edge.

Clint may be stronger, but she’s always been faster. And smarter, although Coulson would probably contest to that.

“Let me go,” she says, and why are her eyes watering? It really is okay. She’s been waiting for a moment like this for the last five years. She’s put in her time. It needs to be worth it, worth something, so that Laura and the kids didn’t disappear for nothing.

Clint has always been more stubborn than her. His grip tightens.

_Some people move on. But not us._

_See you in a minute._

She tells Clint that it’s okay – and is it? Will this even work? Will the rest of them get the other Stones? What if—

Too late to think about it. She’s falling, she’s falling, and then everything goes black.

~

Natasha had been kept prisoner enough times before to be able to tell how many days had passed, even without seeing any sunlight to indicate when it was daytime. It was a skill she prided herself on.

She had no idea how long it had been since she’d been here.

“Here” was…she wasn’t exactly sure. It was a simple room built into rocks in a cave. There was no bed, no food, no other rooms – but Natasha had found she didn’t need them. She’d expected hunger to settle in after awhile, but it never came. She didn’t have to pee. She didn’t feel tired. She felt…

She’s not going to give the creepy red asshole the satisfaction of saying she felt peaceful. But if there had to be a word to describe it, that would be it.

A close second would be lonely.

She’s not sure how long she sits for. She’d expected her back to get sore and her legs to cramp up, but they never do. Scott had said five minutes for him in the Quantum Realm equated to five years outside. Are all her friends dead by now? Did the plan work?

God, she hopes so.

She never feels tired so she doesn’t sleep. She just sits in the room, waiting.

Waiting.

There’s a door to her right. She can’t see what it leads to, but the cynical part of her, the part that argued with Clint every time it seemed her ledger could never be wiped clean, doesn’t want to look. Doesn’t want to hope that there can be something out there.

She’d given Clint hope, back in Tokyo. All she can do is wish that it worked.

~

She’s resorted to singing to herself to pass the time. She may be able to survive here physically, but psychologically, it feels like it’s been months since she last saw Clint, and she’s bored out of her mind.

She recites the Emancipation Proclamation to herself, the first piece of American speech she’d ever read. Then she sings. Then she cries.

For the first time since she’s gotten here, she lays down, and sleeps.

~ 

She wakes up later. She looks at the door and considers going outside to see what’s there. She goes back to sleep.

~

She thinks she hears splashing later. She figures she just misses the taste of her favorite cherry cola. She rolls over and closes her eyes.

Too much sleep used to make her feel groggy. Now she can sleep as long as she wants to.

She figures she can do this for the rest of time.

~

Footsteps.

Even all the time – weeks? Months? Years? – she’s spent here don’t inhibit her instincts one bit. In a split second, she’s on her feet, hands in fists up by her chest, ready to fight.

They drop to her side when Tony Stark walks through the door.

“Agent Romanoff. You miss me?”

~

“I thought that’s what spies do, or have I watched too many Bond movies? Oh, Jesus, don’t tell me there’s no TV here, Pepper just got me hooked on Q—”

“Tony,” Natasha says through clenched teeth. God, she had missed the presence of another human being. Even on undercover, long-term ops, she at least got to communicate with people, albeit strangers. But Tony was dangerously close to making her wish she was alone again. “Slow down. I didn’t want to try going out the door because—”

_Don’t give me hope._

_I’m sorry I couldn’t give it to you sooner._

“—I didn’t want to get my hopes up,” she admits, and they both ignore the way her voice cracks on the last two words.

Tony sits down, looking more contemplative than she’s ever seen him, including the time they had to come up with a solution to undo Tony’s creation that was supposed to protect the Earth. “Okay. I get that, I do. But I’m here now. So, if it turns out it’s nothing, then—”

“Then what?” Natasha interrupts coolly. Even now, when she has no idea where, or when, or what they are, she won’t give Tony the satisfaction of seeing her let her emotions take over.

Tony shakes his head. “Don’t do that shit, Nat.”

Her heart aches at being called Nat. When she was five, she never thought she’d be called anything other than Natalie or Widow. When she fell off the mountain on Vormir, she never thought she’d hear any of her nicknames again.

“I died, Tony. I gave my life for that damn stone. What if going out there reverses what happens?” She pauses, sitting down in front of him suddenly. She grabs his knee harshly. “What happened exactly? It worked, right? Everyone came back?”

Tony takes a shaky breath. He stares out the door for a long moment before looking down at his wedding ring on his hand. He twists it around a few times before closing his eyes.

Natasha waits. She has all day.

“It worked,” Tony finally says, and Natasha lets out a shakier breath mixed in with a relieved laugh. It worked. All her work over the last five years had been worth it. Her sacrifice had been worth it. Everyone who wasn’t there when they left to go time travel was back. Then why—

“But there were some…ah, technical difficulties, really not much to worry about, just some oversight on o—”

“Tony.”

“Okay,” he grumbles. He sighs sharply and squares his shoulders before looking her in the eyes, and it’s now that she realizes how tired he looks. There are light scars over his right cheek that definitely weren’t there when they’d all jumped into the Quantum Realm. “So, apparently, all of Nebula’s memories can be accessed in her mind. When she and Rhodey went to get the Power Stone in 2014, her 2014 self, who was still buddy-buddy with dear old dad, saw them trying to take it. They switched out Nebula’s, and 2014 Nebula came back with Rhodey and transported Thanos from 2014 to Earth.”

Natasha won’t let him see the panic on her face. She merely furrows her eyebrows and nods to indicate for him to continue.

“Before he came back, though, we put the Stones in a gauntlet—beautifully constructed by yours truly, I might add—and Banner put it on to snap—”

Natasha can’t help the intake of breath that comes from her. She and Bruce hadn’t ever rekindled their…relationship, if you could even label it that, but they had stayed close during the five years after the snap. She was the one who convinced him to stop being afraid of the Hulk and try and merge the two together, after all.

_What if I say no?_

_I’ll persuade you._

“Cap, Lebowski, and I tussled with Thanos for a bit, fun stuff, really. Turns out Rogers can hold Thor’s hammer—and that’s not a euphemism, but saying it out loud, it really does sound like I meant…anyway, we were getting knocked down pretty badly when Dr. Strange did his wizard-magic thing, and suddenly everyone came through the portals to fight Thanos’ army that he brought.”

Natasha blinks a couple of times, processing it. The snap worked. Everyone was back. Before she can ask the most obvious question, although deep in her heart she already knows the answer, Tony continues rambling on. She guesses this is the first time he’s gotten to explain and process what actually happened.

“It was beautiful, really. All of the Wakandans, Thor’s Asgardian buddies, more wizards, even Pep came in with some armor I made for her anniversary, the kid was there…”

Tony trails off finally. He gives Natasha a watery smile. “And eventually there was only one way to stop him.”

Natasha nods slowly. People tended to have a very convergent view of Tony Stark—selfish, an egomaniac, careless, money-driven—and on most days she agreed with them. But they didn’t know the Tony she kenw—the one who was willing to fly a missile into space to save everyone, the only person she’d ever considered breaking cover—just slightly, like maybe admitting her real name wasn’t Natalie—for to give him a good birthday.

_I’d do whatever I wanted to do, with whoever I wanted to do it with._

“You’re a good guy, Stark,” she tells him seriously. “I bet there’s already a new monument in New York commemorating you.”

“Malibu, too, I hope,” he quips, playfully nudging her shoulder. “I didn’t pay all those insane taxes for them to just erase my name. Oh, God, I hope Pep doesn’t sell the land I—”

Natasha smiles for the first time in what seems like years. She stands up and holds out a hand to Tony.

“Come on, Stark,” she says to his confused expression. “We’re a couple of martyrs. I think this place has got to have at least something for us out there.”

She briefly thinks about everything he left behind. A wife, a daughter, a home…and then she briefly thinks about all the times she’s given him reason not to trust her. Pretending to be Natalie Rushman, letting Steve and Bucky go in Germany…

She squashes those thoughts. She wiggles her hand.

He grabs it.

~

The sky outside is comprised of beautiful shades of orange, pink, and purple hues.

Natasha hates it.

She and Tony walk along the black-sanded beach in amiable silence until Tony stops.

“Morgan’s going to grow up without a father,” he chokes out, running his hand through his hair. “Shit. Shit! She’s going to know me just through stories from other people. God, Rhodey’s going to make me sound like such an asshole. Happy’s going to be in charge of Stark Industries finances…unless Pepper takes that under her wing, also…oh God, Natasha, Pepper…she’s going to live the rest of her life alone—”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Natasha interrupts comfortingly, grabbing both of Tony’s shoulders. Her green eyes stare seriously into his brown ones until he calms down and gives her an embarrassed, grateful smile. Her lips quirk into a smirk. “We both know Pepper’s not living the rest of her life alone; she’ll find someone. She’s too hot to stay single.”

Thankfully, Tony laughs. Natasha gives a small smile at that, and when his laughter continues on, loud and free in wherever-the-fuck-they-are, she lets her stomach unclench and begins laughing, too.

Natasha thinks about all the news outlets that would have had a field day if they had seen Iron Man and the Black Widow hysterically laughing, leaning on each other, trying to catch their breath on a beach. She imagines the headlines in her mind. _Black Widow: So She DOES Have a Heart!, Tony Stark: Living Life Without Pepper Potts by his Side?, Are Tony Stark and Natasha Romanoff Okay?_

Yes, Natasha thinks. We will be.

~

It’s some time later when they’ve found a smattering of tall, sturdy palm trees by the water. The sky hasn’t changed colors at all, which Natasha thinks will make it even more difficult than it already was to count how many days pass, but that’s something she’ll worry about later.

Tony adjusts himself, leaning against one of the palm trees, adjacent to Natasha. “You know,” he muses. “We didn’t get the Tesseract the first go around.”

Natasha tenses. He’d said the snap worked, that they got all the Stones—

“Calm down, calm down,” he quickly says before she can ask what he means. “Little, ah, oversight on our part, turns out we forgot how angry Hulk was in 2012. Made him take the stairs, he ran into me on the ground level, Tesseract slid away, Loki got it, Lang had to give 2012 me a little jump-start to distract Ross…this all sounds _horrible_ now that I say it out loud, but Rogers and I went back to 1970 to get some more vials from Pym, so.”

His abrupt end to the story causes Natasha to sit up. “So?”

“And, I…met my dad,” Tony breathes, looking up at the sky. “Howard. He was…he was scared about me being born. Said he’d do anything for me.” He shakes his head. “What a damn liar.”

Natasha calculates him. She and Tony have never had a…comforting relationship. They’ve been protective of each other, sure, but they’ve never had intensely deep, emotional conversations, especially about their parents. Speaking of…

“Your father loved you,” she says simply, squeezing his hand. He manages to give her a grimace. She knows what that means; he wants her to change the subject, but he doesn’t want to ask. “The red floating guy who told Clint and I one of us needs to die to get the Soul Stone…he knew our parents. Knew Clint’s mother’s name, knew my father’s name.”

“I thought you didn’t know your parents,” Tony replies evenly, not sure what her reaction is about the information she’s just disclosed.

“I didn’t,” Natasha answers, smiling bitterly. She thinks back to Peggy Carter’s funeral, telling Steve something that won’t be found in any redacted government documents. She’d gone to Russia, stupidly, looking for her parents. What had she been expecting? An old, loving couple who would rejoice the homecoming of their precious дочь?

_We have what we have when we have it._

Tony exhales slowly, blinking. “Wow. That’s…um…creepy? But also…isn’t that good? You know something you didn’t know before.”

Natasha shrugs. “He didn’t tell me much. Just that his name was Ivan.”

Tony tenses. Natasha narrows her eyes.

“If you could make God bleed, people would cease to believe in Him,” he mutters.

Natasha freezes. She’s heard that before. Somewhere, murky, in her mind, she knows this quote is sitting there…said by…

She stops thinking and lets instincts take over when they hear a rustling noise come from the bushes behind them. She lets her body do what it’s trained to do, flipping over Tony, holding her knife from her belt in front of her. She’s crouched down, ready to pounce on whoever would dare threaten them after they gave their lives for the damn world that hasn’t even told them where they are.

She’s also ready to run.

Tony staggers up, slower than her, but still on edge. He doesn’t have any armor on him, but she sees him out of the corner of her eye pick up a large rock from the ground and flex his arms. Good man.

A woman staggers out of the bushes. She has a crazed look in her eyes, the look Natasha recognizes of being alone for just slightly too long, but she looks strong, capable, and…angry. Natasha easily recognizes hidden anger.

The second thing she notices is that this woman’s skin is green.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another day Natasha felt the world was aligning itself for her is when she and Tony are stuck in God-knows-where, face-to-face with one of the daughters of Thanos herself.
> 
> Natasha thinks back to what Nebula had told them about her sister. Gamora was fierce, but good, and a warrior. She had died for the Soul Stone, but unlike Natasha, she hadn’t done it willingly.
> 
> Natasha is willing to bet Gamora wants to get out of here—back to her life, back to that Quill guy, even that raccoon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some very brief mentions of violence in this chapter; nothing that wouldn’t be worse than PG or PG-13 in a movie. Just more than in the first chapter.
> 
> It should also go without saying that I'm not making any profit off this; all the rights to these characters go to Marvel. Just a fan thinking about what could happen if some of my favorite characters were to come back.
> 
> Thank you for all the hits, kudos, and comments. It really means a lot to me since I’m still getting back in the swing of things. If you like this, let me know! Enjoy!!

On very few occasions has Natasha felt the world was aligning itself just for her.

The first time was spring of 2005. She’d just turned 22 years old—she thinks. She’s not exactly sure what year she was born, but SHIELD had run some tests on her when Clint had brought her in two years prior and determined she was about twenty years old. Clint and his fiancé, Laura, were seated on the sofa in house together. Natasha was curled up in their La-Z Boy rocking chair. Americans were so funny, naming their furniture after the rest of the world’s view of them.

They were watching something on the TV that Clint and Laura called “March Madness.” Natasha had done her research; it was a basketball tournament for collegiate-level teams, beginning with a bracket of 64 teams, with only one winner emerging. Natasha understood all too well the concept of having only a single winner; she was the only Black Widow alive in 2005.

She just didn’t get why people seemed so _obsessed_ with it.

The game they were watching was the finals—North Carolina versus Illinois. Both Clint and Laura had gone to Illinois, Natasha had learned, and that was where they had met. Laura had forced Natasha to put on a gaudy, awful, neon orange shirt with “ILLINI” on the chest. Clint and Laura were both donning “ILLINOIS CLASS OF ’94” tee shirts and orange face paint. Everything was University of Illinois-themed: the cups they were drinking from, the blanket Clint had thrown on the floor during the first half, the foam finger on Laura’s hand, even their dog was wearing a blue and orange jacket Laura’s mother had mailed in.

Natasha wonders how this had become her life.

When the game is over, and North Carolina has claimed apparent victory, and Clint has drunk himself into slumber due to disappointment, Natasha isn’t angry about it. This is her life, but she _likes_ it. She and Laura quietly clean up the pizza leftovers they’d ordered, fold the blankets, take down the orange streamers they’d thrown over the TV, and within thirty minutes, it’s like the game never even happened.

Except for the fact that Clint, whose orange face painted has smeared from his face to the arm of the sofa, is passed out drunk, clutching an empty shot glass that reads “Fighting Illini.”

With Natasha’s help, Laura manages to drag Clint up the stairs, down the hall, and into their bedroom. It takes them longer than Natasha cares to admit.

“Wait, Tasha,” Laura calls as she’s exiting the bedroom. Natasha stops. She’s gotten used to Coulson and Fury calling her Natasha instead of Romanoff or Widow, and she’s gotten used to Clint calling her Nat, but Laura calling her Tasha is still new.

“What’s up?” Natasha asks.

“Um, Clint wanted to wait to ask you, but I figure now’s as good a time as ever. We’ve been engaged for almost five years now…”

Natasha likes to pretend sometimes that she doesn’t have a heart. It makes everything easier. It’s times like this one, where her heart skips a beat and feels like it drops from her chest, that she is painfully reminded she possesses one.

“…and we were wondering if you wanted to be my maid of honor.”

Natasha swallows. When she meets Laura’s hopeful eyes, she can’t help but choke out, “Of course. I’d love to.” She clears her throat and masks her emotions. “So, Clint’s finally agreed to a date?”

Laura chuckles, looking lovingly down at Clint, still fast asleep on the bed. “Yeah. Yeah. Director Fury was nice enough to give us this big house, and all this land, when we got engaged and Clint started going on more missions. I think it’s time we turn it into an actual home, for adults—”

She rubs her belly. “—and kids.”

Laura has never once surprised Natasha. This is her first time; it won’t be her last.

“You’re…pregnant?” Natasha asks.

_The ceremony is necessary. For you to take your place in the world._

_I have no place in the world._

Laura grins, nodding. “Just five or six weeks along, the doctor said, but my parents are sort of traditional, and we figured they’d like us to be married before we bring a baby into the world. But that’s not the point. Do you want to be my maid of honor? It wouldn’t require a lot, we don’t really want a big ceremony, but—”

“I’d be happy to,” Natasha says, nodding. She’s surprised that she means it.

Laura’s parents, Natasha learns, are both scientists based out of Germany. The ceremony ends up being Laura’s roommate from college, Coulson, and Natasha.

The day ends up being one of the most memorable of her life.

~

Another day Natasha felt the world was aligning itself for her is when she and Tony are stuck in God-knows-where, face-to-face with one of the daughters of Thanos herself.

Natasha thinks back to what Nebula had told them about her sister. Gamora was fierce, but good, and a warrior. She had died for the Soul Stone, but unlike Natasha, she hadn’t done it willingly.

Natasha is willing to bet Gamora wants to get out of here—back to her life, back to that Quill guy, even that raccoon.

“How did you get here?” Gamora demands, accentuating every syllable harshly, her stance defensive.

“Well, considering we don’t know where here, is, exactly…” Tony mutters, shrugging. He looks around dramatically. “You wouldn’t happen to know where we are, would you?”

“Ignore him,” Natasha recommends, and does just that when Tony loudly scoffs at her. “My name is Natasha Romanoff. This is Tony Stark. We knew your sister, Nebula.”

Gamora doesn’t flinch. “Many people know my sister. Many people would like to see her dead. That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”

“Thanos got all of the Stones,” Natasha tells her. Gamora looks disappointed but not surprised. “He used them to kill half the universe. Our team, along with your sister and Rocket, went back in time to get them to undo what he did.”

“And, I might add, it worked,” Tony piped. “At the cost of our two lives. Shit happens, I’m sure you know that. But now we don’t know where we are or why.”

Gamora sits down on the sand. “My father sacrificed me to obtain the Soul Stone. I don’t know where we are, exactly. I think we’re in a place where…nothing matters. I feel like I’ve been here eons, and not once have I had to eat, or drink, or sleep.” She looks at Natasha, and Natasha recognizes pain behind her eyes. “I tried to drown myself in the water. Multiple times. Nothing happens. We can’t die because we already are.”

Natasha bristles. She had a feeling she was dead; that’s what she was prepared for when she launched herself off a cliff in front of her best friend. However, she hadn’t been prepared to be able to _feel_ or even be conscious after it, so there was a part of her—a hopeful, _stupid_ part of her—that wanted to believe she wasn’t dead. That she could still go back.

“Okay, no,” Tony called, making a time-out motion with his hands. “I don’t know about you, miss, but Natashalie and I have things worth getting back to. I put on the gauntlet with the stones to snap away your daddy-o, and it killed me, because I guess the universe wasn’t too fond of little humans back in the day, but whatever. But her?” He points to Natasha. “She willingly launched herself off a fucking cliff so her best friend wouldn’t have to, so that he could see his family, who died when _your_ father killed half the universe. She isn’t meant to be here. Neither are you. And our friend Thor, you know him, Quill and the rest of your gang did, said that when people died, they went to Valhalla.”

Natasha remembers when Thor told them about the supposed Great Hall. She remembers T’Challa telling her about his culture’s view of death.

_Death is not the end. It’s more of a stepping off point. You reach out with both hands, and Bast and Sekhmet lead you into the green veld, where you can run forever._

She also remembers the Red Room training on death. They viewed it as something to happen to the weak, something that should not be rejoiced or welcomed.

_You’ll break them._

_Only the breakable ones._

At the mention of Quill, Gamora’s hardened expression softens and she stands.

“Okay,” she says. “You’re right. I’ve heard of Valhalla. And I don’t think this is it.”

“Damn right, it isn’t,” Natasha replies. “We died for the rest of the universe. We have nothing to lose by trying to get back.” She holds out her hand down to Gamora.

Gamora takes it and stands up. “What now?”

~

Gamora had been staying in a tall house overlooking the beach. She leads them back there, and although it doesn’t come close to Natasha’s old suite in the Avengers HQ, it’s a far cry better than the simple room she had before Tony found her.

“I can’t believe I’ve been here for five years,” Gamora said, shaking her head. “It feels long, sure, because there’s been nothing to do. But five years…so much could have happened.”

“Not much did,” Natasha reassures her. “Not many people were able to move on after half the universe was gone. Suicide rates went up for awhile, and then leveled off. Crime rates went up, then leveled off. Pollution and poverty went down, way down, but many governments fell too. It’s hard to say if Thanos’ goal was even fulfilled.”

Gamora shook her head. “It was. He was sick. But no pollution? No hungry mouths? That’s the only thing he ever wanted. Who cares about bureaucracy if everyone is healthy and happy?”

Tony suddenly angrily looms over her. “I’m sorry, are you _agreeing_ with him? Because millions of people _died_ because of your dad! Everyone lost someone! The world would have been better off without him acting like…acting like God!”

His chest is heaving. Natasha almost instinctively goes to check the arc reactor before she remembers. They’re dead. It doesn’t matter.

Gamora shakes her head. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. This is just a lot to process. I’m trying to think like Thanos, remember what he knew. See if there’s some way out of here.” She looks at both Tony and Natasha, her expression sober. “I promise I’ll try everything I can to get us back. I have…someone I love still out there. I’m sure you both do also.”

_Love is for children. I owe him a debt._

_Damn, Barton_ , Natasha thinks playfully as she watches Gamora and Tony argue about the state of death they’re in. _I hope I repaid you._

~

Tony exhales. “You know, I’ve been thinking it over, and I’m not really sure about this shit—”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Natasha snaps. She sets down her knife in the sand and marches over to Tony. “I haven’t said anything since you got here because I wanted to be nice to someone who just died, but I can’t just sit back and let you say things our friends who are still living wouldn’t like.” Her serious expression quickly gives way to her trademark smirk. “Watch your damn language, Stark. Seriously.”

Tony stares at her for a moment before chuckling in disbelief. Natasha cracks a grin, and the two of them are laughing hysterically together in a matter of seconds while an amused Gamora watches them.

“Oh, I have to say, I do miss the good captain,” Tony says, shaking his head in amusement. “I wonder what he’s doing without both of us. I wonder if he grew that beard back. Pep showed me pictures, and I gotta say, I might even prefer the beard.”

“I did,” Natasha says seriously.

“Okay, Tony, are you actually ready?” Gamora asks patiently. She has the most difficult job in the plan they’ve messily concoted.

The plan entails…dying again. Natasha never thought she would be so used to talking about dying.

_There are worse ways to go. Besides, where else am I going to get a view like this?_

Each of the three of them hold a weapon. Natasha holds her tiny knife from her belt, Gamora a foreign-looking weapon with double-sided blades, and Tony a sharp spear that Gamora had made from her time here. The plan is for them to kill each other at the same time.

You can’t die twice. They have to go _somewhere_ after it happens.

_Or maybe_ , the cynical part of Natasha thinks, _nothing will happen, and they’ll just be left weaker and bloodier than they were before._

Gamora, for the first time since Natasha has met her, looks scared. “Maybe there’s someone else still out here. Someone who can do it for us. With all three of us looking, we should find something.”

“It should be us,” Natasha argues, gripping her knife. “We can’t trust anyone else. It has to be us.”

_Staying together is more important than how we stay together._

“Okay,” Tony eventually agrees. “Let’s just do a triangle thing here. Nat, you kill me, Fiona, I kill you, and you kill Nat over here.” He shakes his head. “I literally hate that those words just came out of my mouth.”

Gamora doesn’t say anything about the Shrek joke. Natasha realizes she probably doesn’t even understand it.

“Make sure you go for the carotid, Tony,” Natasha advises.

“I’m _offended_ that you think I can’t kill someone, Nat.”

“Three,” Gamora cuts in. “Two. One.”

Blackness. Again.

Well, _shit_.

~

Natasha awakens on a cold, rocky surface. Her hair whips around her face from the wind. She keeps her eyes shut, pretending to be unconscious still, before she gets a better understanding of her surroundings.

She hears Gamora and Tony moving to her left. So they’re…not double-dead. That’s a good sign.

She determines that her neck is fine, along with the rest of her body, so they truly can’t get injured in this place. When she’s confident there’s no one else with them, she slowly stands up.

“Where the hell are we now?” Tony asks, looking around.

Gamora and Natasha share a wary look.

They’re on the cliff on Vormir. The purple sky and the wind in the air are exactly the same as when Natasha fought with Clint over who would throw themselves off the cliff.

“Vormir,” Natasha answers, looking around.

“Oh, little bit of a rough spot for both of you. Sorry,” Tony says. He sits down on a rock. “Who are you looking for?”

“The one who told us about the Stone. I think he’s the guardian here,” Natasha answers. “He…wasn’t human. He floated.”

“The Stonekeeper. His skin was red,” Gamora adds. “I don’t know what species he comes from. Not any that I have encountered.” She paused. “Natasha, you said it was 2014 when you and your friend took the Soul Stone?”

Natasha nodded.

“He was a Stonekeeper. His only job was to guard the stone. Once someone gets it, he’s free to do as he wishes,” Gamora explains. “You said your friend, the Captain, put it back. That’s how Thanos and I came here in 2018. But Thanos got the stone, and he never put it back…”

“So, Red Guy is gone,” Natasha finishes, nodding. “Okay. So why did we end up back here when we died again?”

“This guy,” Tony cuts in. “He wouldn’t happen to look like a skull, would he?”

“He…did, actually,” Gamora answers.

“Romanoff, back me up here…Hydra…1940’s…Adolf’s good friend…there’s no picture evidence of him, but—”

“I’ve heard of what happened to Schmidtt,” Natasha tells him. She sits down next to him, thinking. There’s no way Johann Schmidtt, or Red Skull, is the floating figure who calmly watched her and Clint fight over who got to throw themselves over the cliff. She’d heard stories, back before SHIELD revealed itself to be HYDRA, about Schmidtt. He’d gotten a hold of the Tesseract one day, the one thing he’d cared about, and just…disappeared.

Is it possible he ended up on another planet, made to guard the stone? Could this connection somehow lead them back?

_You never know. You hope for the best, then you make do with what you get._

God, Natasha misses Fury right now. He’d know what to do.

“Let’s find him,” Tony decides, standing up. “If his goal was to work with the stones, figure them out, use them, he’s going to be looking for the other ones. Probably the Tesseract, since that’s the one he was most familiar with, after the Soul Stone.”

“The Tesseract. The Space Stone?” Gamora clarifies. “It can open portals from one part of the universe to another. If we find him, he could lead us to the Space Stone.”

“Which could help us get back, if we’re in the same universe as the people we know,” Natasha finishes. “We have to think this through. We don’t even know what year it is now. We don’t know if we opened some weird, alternate timeline. So many things can go wrong.” Mainly, she doesn’t want to get her hopes up.

“They could,” Tony agrees. He smirks at her. “Since when has Tony Stark taken the boring route?”

“Since never,” he finishes for himself, standing up. He takes a dramatic bow and begins making his way down the steps. Gamora nods at Natasha and follows him.

“You coming, Nat?” Tony asks, turning around.

Natasha takes a deep breath. She’s followed Tony when he was dying from palladium poisoning; she’s followed him when aliens destroyed her favorite city in America; she’s followed him when _his_ creations were the ones wreaking havoc on an entire country in the sky; she’s followed him when her best friend didn’t, couldn’t, Laura wouldn’t let him; she’s followed him through fucking _time travel_. Is this where she draws the line?

_Even if there’s a small chance…we owe it to everyone who’s not in this room to try._

“Yeah,” she answers, smiling. “Right behind you.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She can follow orders. That’s easy. She died following orders.
> 
> _Watch each other’s six,_ Rhodey had told her and Clint. And she had. She’d had Clint’s back through his first time in space, climbing up the mountain on Vormir. She’d watched Clint’s back as he launched himself off the cliff, the most graceful she’s ever seen him, and so she did the only she could have.
> 
> She’d saved him. She’d watched his six.
> 
> Now she just had to get back to him so he could return the favor. Strike Team Delta, back in business.

Natasha is seventeen at the dawn of a new century and millennium. It is November of 1999. Around the globe, especially and most notably in the United States of America, a phenomenon known as Y2K has convinced people that the world is going to end on New Year’s. Natasha thinks this idea is preposterous; computers can’t cause problems nearly as bad as people can.

_Humans are odd. They think order and chaos are somehow opposites and try to control what won’t be. But there is grace in their failings._

Nevertheless, the United States and the Russian Federation have created an operation called the Center for Year 2000 Strategic Stability to assure that the other nation won’t launch a nuclear attack at the turn of the century.

Well, the Russian Federation promised. The Red Room…not so much.

Natasha is in Times Square for New Year’s Eve. Around her, crowds stampede down the street, desperately trying to get as close as possible to the ball drop. Natasha herself is in no hurry.

Her mission is simple: she must evacuate and eradicate the people monitoring security in New York City so that the Red Room can launch a missile without being detected. They told her she will not be able to survive their impending nuclear attack. Natasha doesn’t care too much, and no, she’s not lying. Not one bit.

_Truth is a matter of circumstances. It’s not all things to all people all the time, and neither am I._

Okay, maybe she’s lying a tiny bit. As she looks around at girls her own age, taking pictures of each other on disposable cameras, laughing, hugging, with the possibility of entire lives in their eyes, she can’t help but feel a little jealous.

She finds the operation room for security easily enough. Kills the men easily enough. She contacts the Red Room and tells them she’s ready.

The missile never comes.

It turns out the Winter Soldier, back from being frozen, figures it would be better for the Red Room to bide their time. Wait for the right moment. Natasha clenches her fists. He always seems to come back at the wrong times. She had been prepared to _die._

As she’s leaving New York, she sees on one of the screens in Times Square the country’s youngest billionaire: Anthony “Tony” Stark, waving to the crowds, happily chugging from a bottle in his hand. Natasha scoffs to herself. She finds it odd that the country loves someone whose important parents died nearly a decade prior and used that as an excuse to get drunk and make weapons that kill people. Americans.

Natasha swears she’ll never become one of them. She does like the lights of Times Square, though. But it’s not like she’ll ever be back.

~

“Look,” Gamora exclaims.

She points to a small pod ship, placed delicately in the dirt ahead of them. Natasha’s not sure how long they’ve been walking for, but the ship is a welcome sight.

“Nice,” Tony muses as they get closer. He runs his fingers alongside it. “Give me a couple hours, tops, I should be able to get this up and running.”

“Whose is this?” Natasha asks suspiciously. Why would there be an abandoned ship in the middle of nowhere? “Gamora, you recognize it?”

“Many planets use pods similar to this one,” Gamora answers, looking around. “Most of them require a pilot.”

The three of them are silent, the unspoken question looming in the air: where is the pilot of this ship?

“Maybe he crashed and died,” Tony suggests, already climbing inside and tampering with it. “That would make our lives easier, no?”

“Careful, Tony,” Natasha warns. The hair on the back of her neck is tingling. No way they would get this lucky and have an abandoned ship ready for them to hijack. “Fallaces sunt rerum species.”

_The appearances of things are deceptive_. She’d told Tony that, before. He didn’t listen then.

“You would be correct.”

The three of them instantaneously turn at the sound of a voice. Natasha and Gamora hold their knives up, ready to fight, and Tony reaches for a blaster resting on the seat of the pod.

The man in front of them is dressed entirely in gold. When Natasha looks closer, she sees his skin is the same shiny shade as well.

“Uh, okay, C-3PO, who’s right?” Tony chirps. “Me, right? Please say me. We can just take this ship here and make our way to—”

“Not you. Your friend,” the man answers, gazing at Natasha. She doesn’t let herself flinch. “That is _my_ ship there. My Omnicraft. I’m afraid you can’t take it.”

“He’s a Sovereign,” Gamora tells them, lowering her knife. Her defensive position doesn’t waver. “Their High Priestess tried to kill me and my friends once.”

“Ayesha,” the man confirms. “Yes. That was a little bit ago, was it not? I’d hoped you all had forgotten that. That was before I was made, of course.”

“Made?” Tony questions.

“The Sovereign genetically engineer themselves,” Gamora explains. “They age faster, live longer, possess more strength. They’re…designed. Their bodies and their minds.” She cocks her head at the man. “I can’t believe that Ayesha would let one of you just go as you please. What are you doing here?”

“Well, Gamora, daughter of Thanos,” the man says conversationally. Natasha internally shakes her head. She knew something was wrong. “I was here, looking for _you_ and your team, actually.”

“Why?”

“That is my purpose,” the man answers, grinning. Even his teeth are gold. “I am the superior Sovereign. I am called Adam Warlock.”

~

Before planning the Time Heist, Natasha had been missing fights. It had been awhile since she’d done serious hand-to-hand combat with a true enemy and not practice-sparring with Steve or Okoye when she could visit.

She regretted ever thinking that now.

It hadn’t taken Gamora long to deduce that Adam had been designed and created shortly after the Guardians had gotten the upper hand over his High Priestess, Ayesha, many years ago. Gamora had wasted no time launching herself at Adam, unleashing the pent-up rage of being alone for five years.

Tony waves at Natasha. She’d been about ready to go to Gamora’s aid. “What, Stark?”

“Let’s go,” he whispers, fiddling with some of the controls of the Omnicraft. “I think I figured out how to fly this thing.”

Natasha gives him a flat look. “You aren’t serious.”

“Little _help_ here!” Gamora grunts, getting slammed into the ground by Adam. He doesn’t look the least bit tired. Damn genetically engineered beings.

Natasha gives Tony a _look_ before he sighs, conceding, and they grip their weapons tighter and charge at Adam.

Tony manages to get two shots out of the blaster before Adam wrenches it out of his grasp and heaves it. Natasha tries not to flinch at his apparent super-strength, but the blaster is thrown far out of her sight, kilometers away.

Gamora staggers to her feet, yells, and charges at Adam again. He easily sidesteps her, manages to get her blade, and slash the side of her torso. He uses the other side of the blade to stab Tony’s arm. He turns to stab Natasha.

He doesn’t get the chance. She’s up on his back, wrapping her thighs around his neck, trying to choke him. She readies her knife to stab it into his shoulder when she’s thrown off. They spar for a few minutes, Natasha getting in her fair share of punches and kicks, but slowly getting outmatched by Adam.

Adam isn’t even breaking a sweat. By the time Natasha realizes this, she can feel her muscles aching, her adrenaline slowing. A more intelligent person would have given in and given up far earlier in the fight.

Or a more foolish one.

_This is monsters and magic and nothing we were ever trained for._

“Stop,” Gamora croaks out, struggling to sit up. She raises a hand. “Adam, stop. You could literally do this forever. She can’t.” She takes a shaky breath. “We can’t.”

Adam stops to look at her. Natasha rests her hands on her hips, breathing heavily.

“Why would I waste my time doing this forever?” he asks seriously. “That seems like an awfully depressing life to live.” He turns back to Natasha, studying her, like an adult would to a child who just threw a temper tantrum.

Natasha steels her gaze and raises her chin, locking eyes with him. She’s fought stronger beings and she’s dealt with more arrogant men. This asshole isn’t going to get the better of her.

“And what life do you want to live?” Natasha asks him, raising an eyebrow. Adam may be more powerful, but she has more experience. She can make him he’s got the best of her all while learning what she needs to know.

If she can outwit the god of mischief in her second encounter with him, she can do this.

_Thank you...for your cooperation._

“One worth living,” Adam replies cautiously. His stance is relaxed, but Natasha doesn’t risk getting any closer to speak.

“Following everything your mother says isn’t living,” Natasha points out. “It’s surviving.”

Adam scoffs. “Oh, and _you_ live a life worth living?”

“I did,” Natasha sharply answers. “I stopped following orders from people I knew were wrong. I made my own choices. I had red in my ledger; I wiped it out. I–“

_I used to have nothing. And then I got this...job. This family._

“–loved and I lost,” she finishes, her eyes watering. “And that’s...that’s what makes a life worth living. Have people and things to love. Having something worth losing. Can you say the same about your life?”

“The people you love come close to death. Yes, that sounds _very_ intriguing,” Adam says mockingly. “You never once mentioned the things you did for yourself. The things you wanted to do. I _want_ to do these things. Ayesha doesn’t force me to. I–“

“When I was eight, I wanted to know what it was like to have a best friend. I got that. When I was fifteen, I wanted to know what it was like to go to Paris without having to kill someone. I got that. When I was sixteen, I wanted to know what it would be like to hold a newborn baby. I got that,” Natasha spits, closing the distance between them. She glares up at the Sovereign. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Gamora helping Tony to his feet.

Adam laughs. “You call that a life? You call those _dreams_?” He shakes his head, laughing, near hysteria. “I want to help people weaker than me. I want to destroy corrupt governments. I want to create a star. I want to be known across the galaxy!”

There it is.

“We can help you do that,” Natasha tells him seriously, ignoring Gamora and Tony’s shocked expressions. “You bring us to Sovereign, undetected. You help us. Train with us. Help us become a match for the Sovereign and anyone else who wants to stop you. Then you help us locate Quill and his team, then Earth.”

Adam regards her, even more suspiciously than before. “And why would I do that?”

_You’re not going to put me in a prison. You’re not going to put any of us in a prison. You know why?_

_Because you need us._

“You said it yourself, Warlock,” Natasha muses, looking up at him, looking as innocent as possible. “The High Priestess isn’t going to just let you do what you think is right. You have to do what she says. We bring you back to Earth, or another part of the galaxy where she can’t find you, you can do whatever you want to do there.”

Natasha can picture herself, back on Earth, organizing missions with Steve. If the snap had worked like Tony said, then Sam will be back with them too. Wanda. Rhodey. Clint, when she can convince him. Tony, when he’s bored and Morgan is in school. She wants, _needs_ , Adam to say yes.

She’ll never let him know that.

Adam is staring off into the distance, obviously contemplating her offer. She doesn’t blame him, honestly. He’s definitely getting the short end of the stick. She purposefully left out the detail that Earth probably won’t take too kindly to other-worldly beings after Loki and everything else that followed. It was difficult enough persuading the UN to let Thor and the few Asgardians who were left take a deserted swatch of land in Norway.

“It will take some time,” Adam finally says, still not officially agreeing. “Patience will be of utmost importance. The Sovereign do not enjoy being fooled. The cost of transgression is death.”

“We’ve got a minute or two,” Natasha assures him, smirking. “No one’s expecting us back anytime soon.”

“Uh, actually, I’d love to make it back in time for Morgan’s pre-school graduation,” Tony interjects, holding up his finger. When Natasha and Gamora both glare at him, he raises his hands in defense. “No, you’re right, you’re right. Kindergarten is the only one that matters, anyway. They’re not even cute after that. Patience. We got it.”

Adam regards the three of them seriously. “If I bring you back to Sovereign...it will be a lonely existence for you all. It will be difficult. You will be pushed, harder than you ever have before.”

“I beg to differ,” Gamora says. She nods toward the Omnicraft. “So. Do we have a deal?”

Natasha holds out her hand for Adam. He grabs it, shakes it, and grins, his golden teeth glimmering.

“You have no idea what you’re in for.”

~

“I don’t know about this. Do you really think this is believable?”

“This is the most realistic version, anyway,” Natasha points out.

It’s 2016, no one has been able to pinpoint a location on Bruce yet, the Winter Soldier – who turns out to be Steve’s best friend from the war, go figure – doesn’t recognize her, the Avengers are falling apart, and Laura is going to kill both Natasha and Clint if they don’t make it back to the farm in time for baby Nate’s first birthday party.

And yes, that list is in order of least to most threatening to Natasha.

Clint sighs, running his hand through his hair. The Skype call freezes for a moment before resuming clearly.

“I just feel like I should take Stark’s side on this one. You’ve broken the law way more than I have,” he says, grinning.

Natasha rolls her eyes, letting herself smile for a split second. “He knows me better than he knows you. He’ll feel more confident with me on his side. No offense.”

“Normally I would be offended, but the opposing side is Captain fucking America, so I can’t be too mad.”

“Wanda will be there too. She’ll trust you quicker,” Natasha adds. “Vision will be on Stark’s side. Make sure they don’t bang each other up too badly before you even make it off the compound.”

“I’m a great babysitter,” Clint sighs.

Natasha narrows her eyes seriously. “Clint, I’m not kidding. We have to be looking out for everyone. It’s just up to us. T’Challa is out for blood with Barnes and Steve loses any rationale when it comes to Bucky.”

“And you?” Clint asks, popping a pretzel in his mouth. He chews for a second before clarifying, “How do you feel about Barnes?”

“I feel like you shouldn’t talk with your mouth open. What will your kids learn?” Natasha quips, smirking. Then her expression sobers. “I feel about Barnes how I feel about Barnes. That isn’t something we need to deal with right now. All we need to do is make sure our friends don’t all kill each other.” She sighs. “If you don’t want to be on Steve’s side...I get it. You have kids. You’ll be a criminal. I can do it.”

“Nah, I’m kind of running with this idea now that it’s out in the open,” Clint says, eating another pretzel. This time he finishes chewing before saying, “I mean, worst-case scenario, we get locked up. Then you just come break me out and I live in secrecy for the rest of my life on the farm. There are worse ways to live.”

“There are,” Natasha agrees.

Both of them sit in silence for a minute before a scream is heard from behind Clint.

“Ah, the kids just got roller blades, someone fell,” Clint explains, standing up. He bends down to look into his camera at Natasha, who’s gone pale at the sound of his kids. “Hey, Nat, seriously. Don’t worry about them or me. We’ll be okay. You just worry about keeping T’Challa from murdering Barnes and Tony from pissing off even more people. I’ll head out to get Wanda later tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Natasha concedes, still not satisfied. She hates this whole situation. This is what she gets for working with a team and even getting _attached_ to them. “And the party’s next Friday at three, right?”

“Yeah, but you have to be here before lunch to help us set up,” Clint tells her, winking and turning off his computer before she can protest. Damn, she hates decorating.

She sits back in her chair and sighs. The team that saved New York from an alien invasion is fighting over a couple of papers. Madame B would have made Natasha go to bed without dinner for a week for just being associated with this mess.

And that’s exactly why she has to involve herself even more.

_Just because it’s the path of least resistance doesn’t mean it’s the wrong path._

~

“So technically, you’re the youngest one here,” Tony tells Adam, waving his hand. “So, by seniority, I get the seat.”

“If we’re going by experience in space, I get the seat,” Gamora counters.

They’re all standing, crouched, inside the Omnicraft. The glass hasn’t closed yet, but Natasha knows it will be an even tighter squeeze once it does. There’s only one seat and barely enough room for the remaining three of them to fit behind it.

“If we’re going by size, I get the seat,” Adam argues. “I’m the tallest one. It makes sense that I get the seat.”

Natasha rolls her eyes at all of them and plops down in the seat. When the three of them sharply look at her, she innocently shrugs, smirking. “You guys finished?”

Tony gives her a wry smile before sitting down on the ground, scrunching his knees to his chest. “Yeah, I’m okay with this. Your driving skills aren’t too rusty.”

“Better than yours, Stark,” Natasha quips.

Gamora and Adam settle in next to him, neither one looking too pleased.

Adam gives Natasha coordinates. “Before we get there, slow down. I’ll need to disguise you all as we enter. And calibrate the defense system in case we run into anything we don’t want to.”

“Roger that,” Natasha mutters, familiarizing herself with the controls. It’s not too different than the controls of the Helicarrier. She can follow orders. That’s easy. She died following orders.

_Watch each other’s six,_ Rhodey had told her and Clint. And she had. She’d had Clint’s back through his first time in space, climbing up the mountain on Vormir. She’d watched Clint’s back as he launched himself off the cliff, the most graceful she’s ever seen him, and so she did the only she could have.

She’d saved him. She’d watched his six.

Now she just had to get back to him so he could return the favor. Strike Team Delta, back in business.

“You know, last time I was in space, I nearly died,” Tony says conversationally. “I got to say, I hope this time around goes a little better.”

Natasha hopes so, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah. So…this happened. *rubs hands together nervously* So, I know in the comics, Adam Warlock _isn’t_ gold. We might be seeing a change later ;) I also know he was created on Earth. But…Guardians Vol.2 sort of disrupted those plans, and I’m trying to stay as canon to the movies as possible since that’s what inspired this fic.
> 
> That’s all for now! I’ve got finals all this week so I’m not sure when the next update will be but I’ll try to get it up ASAP. I also have to figure out where I want to go from here. Wish me luck.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint will be _so_ jealous when he hears about her undercover op in space.

It had taken some time, but Adam was true to his word and managed to sneak the three of them onto Sovereign without being detected. He’d had to destroy some of the controls, making it look like they malfunctioned, and requested help as they neared hangar that stored the Omnicrafts. Then, he and Tony had tampered with the engines system to make it implode right as they landed.

The glass casing shattered and the bottom of the Omnicraft caught fire. The two Sovereign who had been tasked with fixing the “malfunctioned” controls were distracted, and they shouted to Adam that they were going to go obtain something to extinguish the fires before it spread. Without waiting for a response, they ran off.

“That worked,” Gamora observed, sounding surprised.

“Some of the Sovereign aren’t…ah, _as_ genetically enhanced as others,” Adam admitted, ushering them out of the Omnicraft and through a side door. “Believe me, not all Sovereign would be so gullible.”

He quickly led them down a dark hallway. Gamora was immediately behind him, followed by Tony, with Natasha bringing up the rear. She made sure Tony was in the middle of them. Out of all of them, he had the most reason to get back, the most worth fighting for. She’d be damned if he didn’t get back to his wife and daughter.

_The one thing that might matter more than a mission. Makes everything easier. Even killing. You still think you’re the only monster on the team?_

Finally, they reached a wall. Adam scanned his eyes in the small screen on it, and the sleek wall opened a small door. They all rushed inside. Natasha scanned her surroundings.

It was a sleek apartment, not unlike the penthouses at Stark Tower. There was an enclave in the wall with pillows and blankets, and papers tacked to the wall inside. When she peered closer, she saw they were clippings from newspapers from major cities like LA and New York and drawings. So maybe Adam hadn’t told them everything he knew and had been to Earth before.

~

Natasha blinks. She doesn’t remember falling asleep. One minute she was thinking about how they got to Adam’s quarters and the next she’s curled up in the blankets on his bed.

She scrambles out. She barely likes sleeping in someone else’s place, let alone in someone else’s _bed_.

“You fell asleep right after we ate,” Gamora says, walking over to her from the kitchen area. “Tony moved you onto the bed. I tried to stop him.”

“Thank you,” Natasha says sincerely. The Yaro Root Adam had prepared for them to eat was delicious and had made her feel comfortable and relaxed.

That made it dangerous. She makes a point to avoid eating it again if she can.

Gamora looks around. Tony is silently sitting at the kitchen table, reading something on a tablet Adam had provided him, and Adam is nowhere in sight. “I don’t like this. Being cooped up here. Who knows if he’s even telling us the truth? Ayesha and her advisors could be on their way here right now to kill us.”

“Then we kill them,” Natasha says gravely, looking at Gamora seriously. The green woman regards her carefully before nodding in agreement.

She looks over at Tony, who hasn’t acknowledged her since she woke up. “What’re you reading, Tony?”

“Just getting familiar with the tech here,” Tony answers, clearly captivated by whatever he’s reading. “Maybe also making a note of things to copy when we get back home.”

He doesn’t say it, but Natasha knows what he’s thinking, because she’s thinking the same thing. If they had half the technology the Sovereign did, they would have had a better chance fighting Thanos the first time around.

Adam hastily enters the room. The door morphs back into the wall just as quickly as it opened.

He triumphantly sets down gold fabric on the table in front of the sofa.

“What’s that?” Gamora asks.

“Clothes,” Adam answers. “I’m planning on having you all leave this room as little as possible, but if we need to, these will at least conceal you a bit. I brought gloves and shoes, too, so the only thing that will set you apart is your skin. But I brought hats and veils, too, so…just run fast.”

“Run fast,” Natasha echoes, fingering the fabric. It’s soft and lightweight; it will make running easier, if they need to do it.

_The first rule of going on the run is don’t run. Walk._

“Look, this place isn’t perfect, I’ll be the first to admit that,” Adam contests. He sits down on his bed, resting his head in his hands, his elbows on his thighs. “Things aren’t as nice as they seem on the surface. Small things that disrupt perfection tend to freak people out and lead to chaos.”

“I’d hate to have seen what happened here when Thanos snapped his fingers and killed half of them,” Natasha muses. She grabs a long-sleeve tunic from the pile of clothes he’d brought. “This one should be loose enough that I could fit some knives under it. Do you think you could steal us a few weapons, Warlock?”

“What in the universe are you talking about?” Adam asks, standing up. “Killed half of the Sovereign? We haven’t had an attack here since I was created. I always stopped it.”

“But you were created nearly ten years ago,” Gamora says, crossing her arms. “Thanos used the Infinity Stones to wipe out half the universe. We told you this already.”

“I thought…” Adam shakes his head. “Well, whatever he did, it didn’t happen here. We still have everyone. That’s why I was on Vormir. I was looking for the Soul Stone.”

“That’s impossible,” Gamora argues.

“Then why didn’t you take the Soul Stone?” Tony interjects, walking over to them. He leans against the wall. “Our plan was to put the stones back in 2014 like they never left. The future of Thanos taking it to, you know—” He makes a slicing motion across his neck, nodding to Gamora, “—became the past. It should still be on Vormir.”

“Well it wasn’t, or else I would have never even encountered you,” Adam argues.

“Hold on!” Natasha exclaims, waving her hands. “You’re forgetting the biggest thing here. The snap didn’t affect Sovereign. Why is that?”

“It definitely affected Titan,” Tony says, shrugging. “Maybe because they’re technically not, you know, living beings? They’re made in a little cocoon and then pop out a butterfly. They skip the caterpillar part.”

“I feel like I should be offended,” Adam pipes.

“We’ll figure that out later. I want to get off this planet as soon as possible,” Gamora says. She looks at Adam. “So what’s your plan?”

“Training for all of you,” Adam answers, walking over to the tablet on the kitchen table. He taps it a few times before pulling up a hologram in front of all of them. It’s a layout of the building his quarters are in. He points to their room and a room on the same floor; both light up green. “This is my personal training room. Anyone who enters must be accompanied by me. It’s big. We can practice sparring, shooting, anything you aren’t familiar with. Much of the technology we have here you’re not used to.”

“We’re fast learners,” Natasha assures him.

“I hope so. Once you think you’re ready, we’ll make our way toward your planet. But it won’t be that simple. The High Priestess assigns me many missions, with little break in between. We’ll have to complete those as well so she doesn’t suspect anything. And the more missions I complete, the more people who will want to see me dead.”

“Oh, goody,” Tony says sarcastically. “We’ve all had people want to see us dead. Just another walk in the park.”

“We have to trust each other,” Adam says pointlessly. Natasha fights the urge to roll her eyes. No shit. “Many people will try and deceive us along the way. We have to know who our friends are.”

_Who do you want me to be?_

_Well, how about a friend?_

_There’s a chance you might be in the wrong business, Rogers._

~

Sparring with Gamora is the most fun she’s had in quite awhile.

Her most recent fights with Steve weren’t fun. They were something to keep the both of them distracted, and neither of them were working towards a goal. If Scott had never shown up at the front gate, they probably would’ve accidentally killed one another.

But Gamora matches her step for step, hit for hit. She’s strong, stronger than Natasha, but Natasha has never let being a weaker species stop her from being weak. Natasha is quicker and lither, more flexible like the ballerina Madame B lied she would become, and she uses that to her advantage whenever she can.

“You’re going to have to teach me that move, where you get up on my shoulders and could choke me,” Gamora says, offering a hand to Natasha, who’s laying on the mat, breathing hard. “I never had anyone to practice stuff like that on. Nebula would never have let me do that growing up.”

“Only if you teach me how you land those triple roundhouse kicks,” Natasha agrees, letting Gamora pull her up.

They both chug their bottles of water. Natasha looks over at Tony, smirking. “How you holding up over there, Stark?”

“Never,” Tony pants, “better.”

He’s running on a futuristic treadmill, just a floating piece of equipment with a large screen in front of it. The platform he’s running on changes speeds the screen presents virtual threats, like aliens shooting at the runner or actual holograms attacking the runner. Tony loved it when Adam explained the concept to him. He was less thrilled when he learned he would actually have to use it himself.

“We’ve been here ten days and no one’s suspected a thing,” Gamora muses, sitting down to stretch on the mat. “That’s a good start.”

“Don’t jinx it, green,” Tony calls. The treadmill stops running. “Yes! Finally! God, I can’t wait to tell Happy about this. He always bet me I couldn’t run five miles.”

“And with people shooting at you. He’ll be so impressed,” Natasha adds.

The gym wall opens for a second so Adam can enter before closing again.

“I have a mission,” he says, holding up a metal ball. He tosses it in the air, and a holographic layout of the planets and stars lights up the room.

Natasha walks around, looking at all the stars. This will never get old. Seeing things in 3D is always so much more exciting than on a tablet screen.

“Slave trafficking on Kallu,” Adam explains, pointing to a planet. “I researched your home planet, Earth. We call it C-53 here. The gravity on Kallu is similar to Earth. The capital city is vast and populated, which makes it easy to smuggle goods and people in. My mission is to locate the slaves in the capital and free them and bring the ringleader back here to Sovereign.”

“Sounds pretty standard,” Natasha notes. “Any catch?” There’s always a catch.

“I failed to obtain the Soul Stone on Vormir,” Adam says gravely. As if Natasha needs to be reminded of that damn place. “The High Priestess has recommended I lead a team of other Sovereign to complete this mission should anything go…not according to plan.”

“She recommended it or demanded it?”

“Is there a difference?” Adam asks dryly, giving her a sad smile. He pockets the metal sphere and the hologram disappears. “Nevertheless, she is granting me the option of choosing my team. I have three others in mind. People we can trust. People who will help us.”

“A merry band of double agents,” Tony sings, stretching his legs. “You should blend right on in, Nat.”

Natasha bristles, but when she sees his warm smile, she relaxes. It’s not like she wanted to betray Tony’s trust, but those had been her specific orders. She wasn’t going to argue with Fury.

“Once you all clean yourselves, I’ll invite them over to my quarters to meet,” Adam decides. He laughs to himself. “This is going to be fun.”

~

“You ask.”

“No, _you_ ask.”

“Natalia!”

“Tanya, you’re the one who wants it.”

Seven-year-old Natasha smirks at one of the other Red Room girls. They’re at a local fair, meant to be a training exercise. One of the Red Room superiors is a confederate, acting as their target, and their goal is to determine who it is.

“It just looks so yummy,” Tanya whines, longingly staring at the cotton candy machine in the corner. “I can’t believe Madame B didn’t give us any money.”

“Our job isn’t to eat,” Natasha replies simply. “Our job is to figure out who our target is.”

“How are we supposed to do that if they didn’t even tell us who it is?” Tanya whines, kicking the grass. Natasha doesn’t fight the urge to roll her eyes. Tanya is older than her, nearly nine, but still behaves like a little baby sometimes. “Everyone here is just playing games or eating food.”

Actually, they’re not. Natasha figured out who the target was ten minutes after they had arrived at the fair, but she’s waiting for Tanya to go get cotton candy so she can speak to the target herself. She wants the man to know _she_ figured it out, without anyone’s help.

“Then go get some cotton candy. Work on your acting skills. Tell the vendor your mother is sick and dying and she can’t afford to work to pay for luxuries,” Natasha suggests.

Tanya reluctantly agrees before marching over to the vendor. Natasha understands the hesitation. The night before, Amelia had died. Yelena had killed her.

“She was going to kill me if I hadn’t killed her,” Yelena whispered in the middle of the night. No one had answered, but Natasha knew everyone had heard. No one slept when there was a new empty bed.

When Tanya begins speaking to the vendor, Natasha casually sidles up to an older man in his sixties, reading a book on a bench. She says the phrase Madame B had given them. “This seems like a perfect day to be doing exactly what we are doing.”

“And what is it we’re doing, my dear?” the man asks. Right on cue.

Natasha gives him a sharp grin. “Succeeding.”

The man gives her an approving nod. “Natalia. Madame was right about you. You never fail. Your little friend, however…”

“She’s not my friend,” Natasha answers instinctively. Sienna had made the mistake of calling Vanya her friend the previous month. Sienna was no longer with them. “She’s an affiliate.”

“Right she is,” the man answered. He stands and holds out his hand to Natasha. “Let’s go, little Natalia.”

“Will Tanya be staying here?” Natasha asks. She wasn’t too fond of Tanya, but she wouldn’t like to see her left behind, either.

“She will,” the man says soberly as they begin to walk away. “She’ll stay here forever.”

Natasha ignores the sounds of a girl’s screams as they exit. If she listens closely, she can almost hear her name.

 _Is it better to be lost or dead?_ she wonders.

Natasha shivers. Definitely lost. Who knows what comes after death?

~

“This is Al-bedo and Aerlig,” Adam says, gesturing to the two Sovereign who enter behind him. “I was under the impression my acquaintance Hatch would be joining us, but after further conversation with him, I don’t think he would be suitable for this mission.”

“You think he’d rat us out,” Natasha says, deadpan.

Adam merely nods.

“Well, don’t worry about him. Hatch isn’t that great anyway,” the first Sovereign says. He’s tall, taller than Adam, and has a friendly smile and curly golden hair. “I’m Al-bedo, but everyone calls me Al.”

He shakes Natasha’s hand, then Gamora, and then Tony, who looks contemplative.

“Al-bedo...Albedo? I’m guessing the ones up top made you to be completely reflective? Invisible, I might say?” he asks.

Al-bedo nods, grinning. “Smart man. Yeah, that is my power.”

To demonstrate, he stands tall, and then suddenly disappears. Natasha focuses on the spot he was standing in. She can vaguely see the outline of his body, but only because she’d been looking. She makes a mental note to practice sparring with Gamora in the dark.

The second Sovereign doesn’t seem as friendly, but Natasha doesn’t blame him. She wouldn’t be too keen on bringing fugitives on a mission given by the leader of her planet, either.

“My name is Aerlig,” he offers. “I was not granted a specific power by the Sovereign, but I always get the job done. I enjoy research, so I’m usually brought along on undercover missions that require many different localities.”

“Ah, he’s being humble,” Al-bedo laughs, tussling Aerlig’s hair. “Aerlig is good at _everything_. He’s super smart, yeah, but he’s also fast and strong, and has saved my ass about a hundred times.”

“A hundred and one,” Aerlig corrects, smirking.

Natasha smiles to herself. That smirk seems familiar.

“So, we heading out now, or..?” Tony asks. “Please tell me we get a bigger ship this time.”

“We will,” Adam answers dryly. “We depart tomorrow morning. We’ll leave early before everyone is milling around to decrease your chances of being spotted.”

Adam nods to Gamora. “You’ve been to Xandar, correct?”

“I was supposed to bring my sister there. Your High Priestess nearly stopped me. She wanted to kill my sister,” Gamora says as an answer. When silence befalls the group, she clarifies, “Yes. Why?”

“We managed to get some old Nova Corps weapons and tech,” Al-bedo explains. “We’ve been hiding it in my place for awhile, not really sure where we could clean them up and use them.”

“Some of us will be going undercover. It will be easier to portray ourselves as Nova Corps instead of locals or government members,” Adam adds. “Gamora, would you accompany me and Al-bedo to get the weapons?”

Natasha and Gamora share a look. They haven’t been separated since getting to Sovereign. Natasha has slowly begun to trust Adam, but it still doesn’t mean she wants to let Gamora go anywhere alone with him.

Gamora gives Natasha a slight nod, signaling she’s comfortable. Natasha reciprocates the gesture.

“And, uh, just so we’re clear,” Tony says to Aerlig once the other three have left, “the Nova Corps is...”

“An intergalactic policing force,” Aerlig answers. He sits down on the couch in a seemingly non-threatening position.

Natasha doesn’t trust so easily.

“When were you born?” she asks conversationally.

“Eleven years ago, approximately,” Aerlig answers. “I was created to further the linguistics section of research. The Sovereign have a history of being rather...conceited, one might say. It’s caused problems communicating with others.”

“I can imagine,” Natasha murmurs, looking at Tony pointedly.

_The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you._

_I think I would just cut the wire._

_Always a way out._

Well. Look how things turn out sometimes.

“And Adam told us you all fare from Planet C-53. How interesting. How did you make it here?” Aerlig says quizzically. Natasha doesn’t miss the disdain in his voice for her home planet.

“Died getting the Soul Stone,” Natasha replies bluntly.

“Used all the Infinity Stones at once. I got to say, it seems like the whole universe really works against us humans. When Thanos used them all he didn’t die. What species is he again, Nat?” Tony rambles, walking around the suite. He goes over to the kitchen and begins pouring himself a drink.

“I never got a chance to ask him,” Natasha jokes. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Aerlig visibly tense at the mention of the Mad Titan. Interesting.

Minutes later, Gamora returns with Adam and Al-bedo. They heave a large bag of weapons and machines onto the table.

“Stark, you want to check out the ship for tomorrow? I need a co-pilot, and Al-bedo will be down below on deck, manning the blasters if we need it,” Adam offers.

Tony glances at Natasha, who tenses. She’s more worried about Tony going off with Adam than she is about Gamora. Gamora knows her way around space, around other planets. Tony...doesn’t.

“Uh...yeah, yeah. Sure,” Tony agrees. He pats Natasha on the shoulder before following Adam out of the room.

A comfortable silence settles over the remaining four. Natasha studies a map of Kallu’s city capital. They haven’t decided who’s going to stay on the ship and who’s going to go down, but she wants to prepare herself just in case.

Plus, Clint will be _so_ jealous when he hears about her undercover op in space.

“Natasha, Adam showed me footage of you and Gamora sparring earlier,” Al-bedo says. “I have to compliment your unique style. Usually humans limit themselves greatly because they don’t think they can do something.”

“Oh, thank you,” Natasha says, genuinely surprised by the statement. Even after spending her entire life fighting, she’s still not a big fan of praise over her techniques. In the Red Room, if she was being complimented, it meant she had had to kill one of the other girls. “Just trying to represent, you know.”

“Yes, yes,” Al-bedo agrees, grinning. “You know, I enjoy those...movies, I think you call them? Aerlig and I found a bunch on Sakaar and figured out how to play them here.”

“Oh yeah?” Natasha replies. God, when was the last time she watched a movie? “Which ones did you watch?”

“Our favorite was _Independence Day_ ,” Aerlig tells her.

Natasha had been thirteen when that movie came out. She remembers laughing with the other remaining girls in the Red Room about the movie. Why would you launch an attack on your nation’s Independence Day? It was so obvious. And cheesy. So...not all that surprising that Americans loved it.

“I remember laughing the first time I saw that as a kid,” Natasha chuckles.

“We laughed, too! It was hilarious!” Al-bedo exclaimed, jumping up. He shook his head. “C-53 would never stand a chance against an alien attack! It was so dumb!”

_How do we do this?_

_As a team._

“Dumb indeed,” Natasha agrees, smirking.

Suddenly, the communicator Adam had given her lights up. She pulls it out and a hologram of Tony and Adam appears.

“Nat, I’ve died again and gone to heaven,” Tony sings. “Seriously. This shit is amazing. I don’t even know how I never thought of it!”

“Wipe the drool off your face,” Natasha tells him instead of saying how relieved she is Adam didn’t betray them and hurt Tony.

“I just got a message from the High Priestess. An unidentified ship landed on the outskirts of Kallu and she thinks it could be more slaves. We’re due to leave in an hour,” Adam says. “Al-bedo, Aerlig, one of you sneak Gamora or Natasha to the ship, and the other two stay behind and clean and ready the Nova Corps weapons. I’ll be there shortly to help carry them all.”

“You got it,” Al-bedo agrees. 

Natasha pockets her comm and adjusts the golden tunic she’s become accustomed to wearing. Gamora does the same. They pull on their gloves and adjust their clothes so that the only non-gold visible parts on their body are their faces.

Aerlig offers to clean the weapons. Natasha volunteers to stay behind as well. Aerlig gives her a warm smile as Al-bedo and Gamora leave. “So. How is Sovereign treating you this far, truly?”

“Good, so far. The parts that I’ve seen, at least.”

Aerlig sympathetically shrugs. “The High Priestess does have harsh rules, but they work. The Sovereign are truly an advanced race. Everyone seems happy.”

“You say that as if you’re not one of them,” Natasha notices, sitting down at the table.

Aerlig stares at her for a moment. Natasha stares right back, her focus unwavering. She won’t look away first.

It’s Aerlig who does. Natasha smirks to herself. He clears his throat. “I am, of course. I just feel like sometimes I’m on the outside looking in. Like I will never truly be one of them.” His voice is calm and relaxed, while his posture is anything but. Natasha learned long ago to listen to people’s movements and not their words.

Natasha makes her gaze wistful as she stares at the ceiling. “I know what you mean.”

They work in silence for a few minutes, efficiently cleaning the weapons and loading them with ammunition. Natasha could do this in her sleep, and she knows Aerlig could too. She just has to wait for the right moment to–

“So, what do you have left on C-53 that makes it worth getting back to?” Aerlig asks conversationally. “Surely it must be grand if you don’t want to explore the galaxy. Relax. Retire. There must be people, or at least someone, you care about.”

_You figured this out. I remember a time when that seemed impossible._

Instead of answering him, Natasha picks up the blaster she’s cleaned and loaded, cocks it, and points it at Aerlig’s head.

His eyes widen and he drops the blaster he’d been carrying. “N-Natasha! What are you doing?”

Natasha narrows her eyes. “How _stupid_ do you think I am, exactly? Don’t underestimate me.”

Aerlig holds up in hands in surrender. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Natasha. Come on. Put that down.” He slowly reaches for his communicator. “I’m going to contact Adam, maybe–“

In a split second, Natasha fires the blaster at his comm unit, causing it to break into pieces. Smoke blows out of it. While Aerlig stares at the damage she’s just done, she knocks him to the ground, pinning him down with one knee and holding the blaster to his temple.

“Cut the bullshit. Is Warlock in on this?” Natasha hisses, vibrating with anger. If anything happens to Tony...

“I honestly have _no_ –“

Natasha rolls her eyes. “Aerlig, really? ‘Ærlig’ in Norwegian means honest. Why would you pick something so obvious?”

Aerlig sighs. For a second, he shimmers, and then Natasha is glaring down at a face she hasn’t seen in person in over ten years.

“Surprise,” Loki sings sheepishly. Prince of Asgard, Odinson, Rightful King of Jotunheim, god of mischief, and a huge pain in Natasha’s ass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DID ANYONE ELSE SEE THAT FAR FROM HOME TRAILER?!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha considers their options. They have a fully-functioning, large ship at their dispense, capable of bringing them back to Earth, even if it’s not the Earth they’re familiar with. But they wouldn’t have gotten this far without Gamora, who deserves to find her family again, too, and definitely doesn’t deserve to be left alone with the planet that once tried to kill her sister and Loki.
> 
>  
> 
> _Even though they’re gone, I’m still trying to be better._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some _very_ brief mentions of PTSD in this chapter, just a warning!

The Black Widow is never surprised. The Black Widow does not show emotion. The Black Widow does not show weakness.

Especially in the company of the one who turned her best friend against her for the first and only time in their lives.

But _damn_ it’s hard not to when Natasha has just learned that, even if she survives the journey back home, it might not be the home she knows.

“I’m not overly fond of the term ‘alternate universe,’” Loki tells, rolling his eyes.

“Then where are we?” Natasha demands. “You say you grabbed the Tesseract in 2012 when no one was looking and made your way around space before landing here, where the snap didn’t happen. What would you call this?”

Loki bristles. “Alright, fine, this is an alternate universe. Or as close as you can get to one, anyway.” He shakes his head, long black hair falling around his face. “I’m not sure how. I wasn’t _trying_ to. I was just trying to find somewhere Thanos wouldn’t be able to find me.”

“And you ended up in a universe where you don’t work for him and no one knows where the Infinity Stones are,” Natasha adds dryly. “Wonderful.”

She rubs her temple. She’ll never admit she’s out of her area of expertise. Even when Scott was rambling about quantum physics to her and Steve, she pretended to know everything he was saying. When Scott and Tony argued at his house whether they should attempt the infamous Time Heist, she stayed quiet until she said what she could, until she said what she knew would matter to Tony.

_We have to take a stand._

She’s not going to make everything they did for nothing. They _have_ to get back.

 _See you in a minute,_ she’d told Steve. It was turning into a damned long one. 

“That doesn’t mean Earth is completely different,” Loki says. “There hasn’t been much research on alternate universes for me to study, obviously.”

“So Tony and I...could still be alive in this universe,” Natasha muses, mind whirling with all the possibilities. If that was the case, should they still try to get back to their family? “Or...Asgard could still be intact.”

Loki scrunches his nose. “Intact? Oh, gods, don’t tell me Odin died and Thor made changes without any counsel.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow, remembering what Thor had told the Avengers: his father had died, revealing he had an older, long-lost sister – who also happened to be the goddess of death, because why not – and the only way to stop her had been to cause Ragnarok, the end of Asgard. Then as they were leaving for Earth, Thanos and the Black Order had killed half of the Asgardians, and then half of those who remained died after the snap. And that wasn’t even mentioning he had watched one of his best friends and closest confidants die right before Loki also died.

No wonder Thor had changed. Natasha wondered how Loki would react if she revealed all of this information to him.

“Well, I can’t say. I’ve never been to Asgard” is the answer she settles for.

Loki chuckles, leaning back in his chair. “Well, Agent Romanoff, don’t fret your tiny human mind. Never say never.”

Natasha crosses her arms. “So you are planning on going back? Last time we saw each other you were en route to be imprisoned there for your crimes.”

“Everyone goes home eventually,” Loki cryptically replies, smirking. “I am simply on a journey right now. On the journey here, there were many rocks in the road. And somehow it still leads to me coming home.”

“Been practicing poetry?” Natasha sarcastically asks.

Before Loki can reply, someone knocks on the door. Natasha stands up and Loki morphs back into the golden Aerlig in a second.

The door clicks open, and Tony enters. He gives them both warm smiles. Natasha feels sick. She and Bruce used to talk about Tony’s PTSD from the Battle of New York. If it hadn’t been for Loki…

“Snack room. I love it,” Tony sings, walking over to the table behind Natasha and grabbing an assortment of snacks. While chewing, he points at Natasha. “Make a note. We should seriously add snack rooms to our ships when we get home.”

“I’m not your assistant, Tony, make note of it yourself,” she replies good-naturedly. “How long until we land?”

“Couple of minutes,” he replies, grabbing the seat next to her. “They decided Gamora’s going to stay here on the ship in case anything goes haywire.”

“And you?” Natasha prods, not hiding the concern in her voice. She ignores Loki’s – Aerlig’s – amused expression at her tone. “No offense, Stark, but undercover isn’t exactly your style.”

“I’m…going to take that, as a compliment,” Tony says, throwing a piece of fruit at her face. She catches it in her mouth and gives him a cheeky smile. “I _will_ be going down, actually. The Sovereign have developed some stealth cloaking tech based on Al-bedo’s genetic makeup that makes whatever’s under it disappear. But it’s still a prototype, so I’m coming along to make sure it works properly.”

“Okay,” Natasha sighs. She figures she can still keep an eye on Tony that way.

All three of their communicators beep suddenly, signaling the ship is going to land any second. Adam’s voice rings out over the intercom. “Stark, grab the cloaking gear from the hull. We’re approaching the outskirts of Kallu now.”

Tony stands up, winking at Natasha. “See you in a minute.”

“Screw you, Stark.”

“I’m a taken man, Natashalie!” Tony gasps in mock shock, pointing to his ring finger as he exits the room, chuckling.

Aerlig – Natasha decides to call him this when he’s in Sovereign form – stands, preparing to leave the break room. “His arrogance has not dwindled. In fact, one might argue it has…exacerbated.”

“He died saving the world; he’s got the right,” Natasha retorts, following him out of the room. Before they ascend the stairs to meet the others, she catches his arm. “Hey. Look at me.”

Surprisingly, Aerlig turns around and looks at her, prepared to hear what she has to say.

Natasha cocks her head to the side, her expression sober. “If anything goes wrong out there…get Tony back safely. Please.”

_Your world in the balance, and you bargain for one man?_

Aerlig stares at her for a moment in silence. Then, he turns on his heel and goes up the stairs, leaving Natasha alone.

~

“People don’t seem to like the Nova Corps too much,” Natasha mutters, highly aware of the locals’ wary expressions of them as they strode toward the reort building in the stolen uniforms. “These guys good or bad?”

“Supposed to be good,” Al-bedo answers. Natasha glances to her left; he’s using his powers so nobody sees him, but it is a little unnerving to go into an undercover mission on a foreign planet with no ability to see one of your allies.

Whatever. Natasha’s dealt with crazier, more difficult things.

“But sometimes they’re bad,” Aerlig adds. “Much like your policing task forces on Earth.”

“How do you know what the police are like on Earth?” Tony asks.

Natasha glares at Aerlig, but with the large Nova Corps helmet on her head, he misses her expression. Before he can answer, Adam holds up his hands, stopping them.

“Alright. Five Nova Corps is going to seem suspicious. Once we get down there and locate the slaves, two of us take point with them; don’t let any of them out of our sight. Al-bedo landed the ship we’ll be transporting them on close to our ship. Those two keep contact with Gamora so she knows when you’re coming. The remaining three stay behind to find the traders and anyone else in on this,” he says, looking around.

Everyone nods in confirmation. Natasha feels a sick sense of comfort in following orders. For the last five years, she’d had to deal with the anxiety that came with sending people – and raccoons – she cared about into situations they might not make it out of alive. Before then, at SHIELD, as long as she completed her mission, Fury never asked for detailed mission reports from her. He knew she would do what she needed to get the job done. And that mentality had been encouraged and instilled during her time in the Red Room.

It would be a welcome change to simply follow orders because, for once, she didn’t know a better way to do things. Who knew what surprises this Kallu place could offer?

_You’re a spy, not a soldier. Now you want to wade into a war. Why? What did Loki do to you?_

Adam converses with the front desk of the resort. Natasha takes this time to examine possible escape routes. The team’s goal may be to rescue slaves and smuggled goods. And that’s fair; she’ll do what she can to help. But her main goal is to keep Tony alive and get back to Earth.

No matter _what_ Earth it is.

The five of them make their way to the basement, unescorted, under the guise that the Nova Corps needed to examine structural frameworks of major buildings. Gamora had told them all on the ship that the Nova Corps had been wiped out by Thanos, but since Sovereign was apparently immune to his snap, surrounding planets probably wouldn’t have felt the effects of his wrath either.

Loki – as Aerlig – had purposefully avoided Natasha’s eyes when Gamora told them this.

Natasha brings up the rear, letting Adam take point. The five of them are silent, scanning every square inch of the walls in the basement, looking intently for anything that might indicate where the slaves are being kept.

Out of the corner of her eye, Natasha sees someone walking in the opposite direction of them.

“Hey!” she calls, sprinting toward them.

She throws herself at the person, wrapping her arms around their shoulders and kicking both of her legs straight out in front of her, next to the person’s waist. She uses this momentum to swing herself up so she’s straddling the person’s shoulders and then swings downward, effectively flipping the person onto the floor and pinning them down.

Her four comrades run toward her.

The person she’s pinned down is male and humanoid with light blue-gray skin. He spits up at Natasha. She balls a fist and punches him in the face.

“What are you doing down here? This is restricted territory,” Adam asks the man. “Who are you?”

“Moqa,” the man answers, glaring at them. “You all aren’t Kallusians. I suggest you leave now if you know what’s good for you.”

“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen,” Al-bedo says. “We’re looking for slaves being trafficked through your planet. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

Moqa stares at them for a moment, his face void of emotion.

“The slaves,” he answers simply, “aren’t worth saving anymore.”

Natasha’s grip on him tightens. “What did you do to them?”

“I haven’t done anything!” Moqa insists, still not looking as scared as he should be with five people looming over him. The “yet” at the end of his statement is implied, but before Natasha can begin interrogating him, Adam reaches down to Moqa and handcuffs him.

He stands up. “You’re coming with us.” To the rest of them, “Let’s tear this place apart until we find them.”

Natasha brings up the rear again, keeping a close eye on Tony and an even closer eye on Moqa. Something isn’t right, she’s sure of it. She could figure it out if she could just get the chance to look at the Kallusian or speak with him more. Figuring people out is her specialty.

After nearly an hour of searching the basement, Aerlig notices a part of the wall that’s a slightly brighter shade of paint than the rest of the wall. Without a moment’s hesitation, he pulls out his blaster and blows the wall to smithereens. Smoke emits from the blast, obstructing their view from looking inside.

“You should have thought that through,” Adam chastises.

Moqa suddenly spins around and begins to sprint away. Tony aims his blaster at the ground in front of him and fires, making Moqa halt in his tracks. “Sorry, Mocaccino. You’re staying with us.”

By now Natasha has figured it out. This resort is going to explode at any second. She feels it deep in her gut. They need to get out of here.

“We need to go _now_ ,” she hisses to everyone, grabbing Tony’s arm, preparing to run with him. “This place is about to blow.”

Al-bedo looks bewildered. “What? We need to rescue the slaves!”

Adam, however, gives her a considering look. “Why do you say that?”

By now, the smoke has cleared. They all peer in to the room. If Natasha hadn’t been trained at age four to suppress her gag reflex, she would throw up right now. Tony does, ripping off his helmet to retch onto the floor.

The smell of decaying bodies wafts through the air. Natasha looks around in horror. Dozens and dozens of dead bodies, some alien, some human-looking, all bound in chains, are piled carelessly in the room. And in the front of the pile…

“Damnit!” Aerlig swears.

In front of the pile of dead is a bomb, blinking and flashing rapidly.

Natasha _hates_ being right sometimes.

~

“You know, I think this might be our first fight,” Natasha jokes, attempting to lighten the mood.

“Stop using sarcasm to get out of serious conversations. It’s not _funny_ , Natasha,” Bruce snaps, slamming his Stark laptop shut. This causes Natasha to square her shoulders and look at him seriously. They’ve recently mastered the transformation from Hulk back to Bruce using what the team has dubbed the lullaby, but they haven’t been as successful preventing Bruce from transforming into the Hulk in the first place.

Three years ago, Natasha would have fought anyone who suggested she would actually be fond of the one man who managed to scare her, the one man she knows who isn’t fallible to her skillset. Fate has a cruel way of working, especially for her, she thinks.

Bruce immediately holds up his hands, sucking in his breath. “ _Shit._ I’m sorry. Natasha, I–“

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it,” Natasha quickly assures him, ignoring how her heart has begun to pound heavily at the slam.

They’re in Bruce’s lab in Stark Towers, relaxing for a few hours before the team heads to Sokovia to get Loki’s scepter. The mission has been planned for awhile, something Steve has wanted to complete ever since SHIELD was revealed to be Hydra, but he wanted to wait until Thor came back to Earth to go.

Bruce takes off his glasses and tosses them onto the table in front him, rubbing his eyes. “I’m still sorry, though.” He shakes his head. “It was stupid of me to suggest that Clint shouldn’t come to Sokovia. I’m sorry.”

It was, but it was even more stupid of Natasha to get attached to her stupid best friend and making her protective of him, but she’ll never admit that.

“Clint’s fine. He dealt with what Loki did to him. He’s not going to spontaneously combust at the sight of the scepter,” Natasha says.

She remembers squeezing herself into a twin-size bed for two months, Lila on one side of her, Cooper on the other, playing music loudly on the speaker in Lila’s bedroom to drown out the sound of their father screaming. Trying to get Loki out of his head, trying to save his wife and kids.

Lila and Cooper might have been momentarily distracted by the music, but Natasha has better hearing, and the screams coming from Clint and Laura are sounds that will stay with her for a long time.

“You’re not real! Stop pretending to be my wife! Get _out_ of my head!”

“I’m real, Clint! Look at me! Loki’s gone! You’re going to wake the kids!”

Once Lila and Cooper fell asleep, Natasha would turn off the music. By this time, Clint had usually resorted to normal speaking volume, still crying out that there’s something in him, something he can’t get rid of. When the music turned off, Laura knew it was safe to come in Lila’s room. She would give Natasha an apologetic, sad smile, and Natasha would slide out of the bed and go to Clint. She would detail how she recalibrated his brain, reminding him of how they defeated Loki, and before she can get to the part where Thor and Loki get sucked into the sky, Clint would be passed out on his and Laura’s bed.

For two months this happened. Natasha would do it for the rest of her life if the Bartons needed her to.

“Clint’s fine,” she reiterates to Bruce.

“Okay, I believe you. I’m just sure it’s difficult,” he replies, turning back to his computer screens. “I mean, first he gets brainwashed, and then Coulson dies, and Clint really only has you left to talk to, right? And you just had to go undercover for a few months after the whole Hydra debacle, and...” He shakes his head. “He’s a stronger man than me, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah, he could definitely take on the Hulk,” Natasha quips, her stomach dropping. There’s no way this...thing...between them is going to work if she has to keep all these secrets.

Oh, well. Bruce will find someone else. She’ll die before she spills Phil’s or Clint’s secrets.

Bruce chuckles and takes a drink of his water. “It could happen. Things change.”

He believes her so willingly, doesn’t for a second consider she might be lying. It angers her. Phil is alive and well and _going on missions, for fuck’s sake,_ and Clint is married with two children. How can someone she knows believe the coverup stories so naively? It makes her want to hate him.

It also makes her want to never be away from him.

_STOP LYING TO ME!_

_I’m sorry, that was mean. I just wanted to see what you’d do._

How things change, indeed.

~

Natasha’s vision focuses once the initial explosion throws everyone to different parts of the hall. Alarms are blaring overhead. The walls are cracking and caving.

“Tony,” she gasps, coughing. “Tony!”

He doesn’t respond. She staggers to her feet, pulling her blaster of its holster.

Moqa is laying on the ground a few meters away from her, blood pouring out of his temple. He groans and looks up, meeting her eyes.

“H-help,” he rasps. “I need...medical...help.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. Then she empties three shots directly into his chest.

She steps over him, treading quietly, looking for any of the team. The alarms definitely mean someone is going to come down to the basement soon, and they need to get out of here.

“Romanoff,” Aerlig calls.

She turns at the sound of his voice. He and Al-bedo stand on each side of Adam, holding him up.

Natasha squints her eyes. Why does the supposedly strongest Sovereign need help after an explosion when she’s doing fine?

Well, “fine” is being generous. Her head is pounding, her shoulder is sore from where she landed on it, and she tastes blood, but she _will_ be fine.

“He was closest to the blast,” Al-bedo says by way of explanation. “Trust me, any of us would be doing a Hela of a lot worse. Let’s get out of here before Kallusian security comes.”

“No, we need to find Tony,” Natasha argues.

As if on cue, the ceiling besides her caves in, and parts of the wall tumble down on top of it, barricading the way to venture any further down the hall.

“It’s too late for him,” Adam coughs, shaking his head. “Think logically, Natasha.”

If the building around them wasn’t about to collapse and kill them all, Natasha would fight him, injured or not.

“Go, then,” she snaps, adjusting her helmet. “Leave the extra ship for us. I’ll find him myself.”

Aerlig looks like he wants to argue, but Al-bedo is already dragging Adam away, and Natasha turns back toward the rubble. She pulls out her comm unit and tracks Tony’s. He’s close.

“Tony!” she yells desperately, climbing over pils of dismembered limbs mixed in with pieces of beams that had held the ceiling up. “Come on, Tony. If you yell out to me I owe you.”

“You owe me a cheeseburger then,” a faint voice replies. “Whopper, no onions, extra m–“

Natasha can’t help but laugh, overwhelmed. She quickly runs toward the sound of his voice. His left shoulder and arm are caught under a steel beam, and his face is cut up, but compared to certain states she’s seen him in, he looks great.

“Anything you want, once we make it out of here,” she promises, positioning herself to dead lift the beam. “On three, roll out. One, two, three!”

Tony heaves himself away from the wreckage the second Natasha manages to lift the beam. She drops it back down once he’s free, breathing heavy, and rolls her shoulders.

“You ready to run?” she asks, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward the stairs, quickening their pace with each step.

“I feel like that was a rhetorical question,” Tony wheezes.

They make their way to the ground level, where civilians are scrambling around wildly, screaming. There doesn’t seem to be any organization to the chaos, and Natasha takes advantage of this. She and Tony go straight through the crowd and exit the building.

She nods to one of the hovercrafts parked outside. “Think you can fly that thing?”

“Only one way to find out,” Tony answers, rubbing his hands together.

They hop into the hovercraft. Tony studies the controls for a minute before pulling back a lever and pressing his foot to a pedal. The hovercraft shoots up into the sky, making Natasha tumble back in her seat.

“Sorry! Sorry, I think I’ve got the hang of it now,” Tony says, slowing down the speed. He begins driving. “Where to?”

“The ship that was supposed to carry the slaves,” Natasha answers. She shakes her head. What the hell happened here? And why did the Sovereign leave so quickly? Something has to be going on. If this was a set-up...

They drive in silence before reaching the ship. They scramble out of the hovercraft and board the ship, breathing heavily.

Natasha finds drinks for them to hydrate themselves. Once they’ve drank and sat for a minute, Tony pulls up a holographic map of the surrounding planets.

“Do we go back for Gamora?” he asks. “Because I gotta say, I’m not too fond of the guys that just left us without a second thought.”

Natasha considers their options. They have a fully-functioning, large ship at their dispense, capable of bringing them back to Earth, even if it’s not the Earth they’re familiar with. But they wouldn’t have gotten this far without Gamora, who deserves to find her family again, too, and definitely doesn’t deserve to be left alone with the planet that once tried to kill her sister and Loki.

_Even though they’re gone, I’m still trying to be better._

“Gamora wouldn’t abandon us,” Natasha finally says. “And we wouldn’t have defeated Thanos without her sister.”

“Damn pathos,” Tony mutters. He enters in coordinates to the ship. “Okay, fine. Setting course for Sovereign. But we’re not landing. We get close, we make the call to Gamora and tell her to take an Omnicraft out to us, and then we hightail it out of here.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Natasha agrees. After a beat, she says, “Tony, there’s something I need to tell you. And you can’t get mad at me because we’re all each other has left right now.”

“Shoot.”

“Aerlig is Loki,” Natasha says, not pulling her punches. She waits patiently for him to respond.

To her surprise, Tony swears, and then chuckles. “If we’d just let Jolly Green onto the elevator...”

Surprised – and pleased, although she’d never tell him – that he’s not angry at her for not telling him right away, Natasha just settles back in her seat. “Well, regardless. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right when I realized it. He also said we’re in an alternate universe, or so he thinks.”

 _That’s_ what surprises Tony. He mumbles equations to himself, different theories and outcomes about alternate realities, before running a hand through his hair, his helmet having gotten lost after the bomb went off.

“Well, that...makes our goal of getting home a little different,” he finally says. “You still wanna go?”

“What, you don’t?” Natasha asks.

Tony’s silent.

“I do,” he eventually says. “In this universe...maybe Pep just didn’t put up with my bullshit and we’re not together. Maybe Morgan was never born.” He shrugs his shoulders and gives her a tired smile. “But I have to try, Nat. I have to. We have to.”

_I can’t roll the dice._

Natasha nods. She’ll follow Tony wherever he goes.

When they near Sovereign, Natasha uses her comm unit to try and contact Gamora.

“Natasha!” the green woman exclaims, her voice fuzzy over the static. “Are you and Tony okay? Al-bedo and Adam said it was too late for you, or something, and made me fly them back. I’m so sorry, I never would’ve–“

“We’re fine. Gamora, it’s okay,” Natasha assures her, feeling slightly guilty that they were considering not coming back for her. She squashes that thought. “But we’re outside. Haven’t landed yet. We can leave now, if you want. Go find your guy.”

Gamora’s silent for a moment. Natasha thinks her connection’s been fried before the other woman eventually speaks.

“I think you guys should land,” Gamora says.

“What? Why?” Tony asks.

Gamora takes a shaky breath. “The Sovereign have healing pods, similar to their birthing generating ones, for everyone. It’s not specific to any one person so anyone can use one. Adam used one, and it’s like he was never in an explosion.”

“And that’s great, we’re happy for him,” Tony sarcastically says, rolling his eyes, “but that doesn’t really have anything to do with us.”

“Actually, it does,” Aerlig gets on the line.

Natasha doesn’t miss the way Tony’s face pales or his grip tightens on the steering controls.

“As humans, it’s going to be much easier for you to be killed on this side of the galaxy,” he continues, ignoring Tony’s incoherent grumbles. “If you all had _any_ alien genetic mutations in you, it would increase your chances of surviving exponentially, and you might actually have a shot at getting back to your home planet.”

“What are you saying?” Natasha demands. 

“You can use the healing pods,” Gamora summarizes, and Tony and Natasha look at each other with wide eyes. “You guys would have alien DNA in you. You’d be stronger, harder to kill, more invincible.”

Well, Natasha hadn’t been expecting _that_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha stares at her fist in shock. It’s not red in the slightest, and she feels no throbbing. She’s never punched someone hard enough to dent a wall before, let alone a _Sovereign alien_.
> 
> Tony and Gamora stare at her also.
> 
> “I guess it worked,” Tony says after a pause.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I’m thinking I’ll definitely finish this story before Far From Home comes out and then after seeing the movie I’ll decide if I should/can do a Part 2 of this story since I have a feeling everything they’re going to do with the multiverse might mess up everything I have here lol. In the meantime, after this story is complete, I’m going to go back and look at my old works and see if any are still salvageable enough to be somewhat canon and do some editing and maybe start some new works :) As always, thank you for reading!

“Do _not_ tell me you’re seriously considering getting into that thing,” Tony warns Natasha, grabbing her shoulder harshly. He lowers his voice. “These people…aren’t even really _people_. We have absolutely no data on the effects on a human body. This could kill us.”

“Well, we already died once,” Natasha muses jokingly, raising an eyebrow.

When Tony’s serious expression doesn’t waver, she falters. She’d been expecting Tony to be excited about the possibility of genetically altering themselves for the better, to increase his chances of getting back to his wife and daughter. She’d thought this would be a no-brainer, that she’d follow him and get whatever Sovereign DNA injected into her that she could.

“You aren’t going to die. Humans aren’t _that_ that weak,” Aerlig offers, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, zip it, Reindeer Games. Kind of in the middle of something,” Tony snaps, pointing between himself and Natasha.

Aerlig whips his head toward Natasha to glare at her. She offers an apologetic shrug and half a smirk. Had he really expected she would never tell Tony his secret?

Al-bedo opens the door to the room where the healing pods are. “You guys might want to keep it down a bit. I can hear you out in the hallway.”

“You know, a _good_ lookout would keep a look out, and not come in the room he’s supposed to be looking out for,” Tony calls, waving. “Shoo. Get out.”

Al-bedo sighs. “Just hurry, if you’re going to do this. We’re lucky Adam has his own healing pod that the High Priestess wants to oversee. They’ll probably be done shortly.” He exits the room again, quietly closing the door. 

Gamora crosses her arms. “Tony, if you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to. But Natasha can speak for herself.”

“Uh, no,” Tony argues, pointing at her. “That is my friend, and whatever we do, we do it together. So we’re both _not_ doing this.”

“Tony, hang on,” Natasha pleads.

She has to admit, getting alien DNA into her body is not how she wants to spend her day. The whole idea is unnatural, absurd, unheard of. Even Carol had the Tesseract’s energy to help her when the Kree gave her some of their DNA. She and Tony weren’t so fortunate.

But if this can give them a fighting chance at surviving alien attacks, surviving the trek to Earth, surviving whatever possibilities an alternate reality dishes out to them…

_Whatever it takes._

Besides, she wasn’t wrong when she said they’d died already. She launched herself off a cliff for a damn rock. This couldn’t be much worse.

“Okay, look,” Tony sighs, closing his eyes. “There’s been research on crispers.”

“Crispers?” Natasha questions, her expression serious but still joking. “Like, from Chili’s? Clint loves—”

“Not _crispers_ ,” Tony huffs. “CRISPR. As in, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. CRISPR/Cas9 is the new tech of editing genomes, modifying organisms. Mainly prokaryotes. They haven’t done any modifications on humans because it’s dangerous. Stupid. Guaranteed to kill you.”

“You wielded the power of all the Infinity Stones, Tony,” Gamora points out. This makes Aerlig study Tony with renewed interest. “I’d argue that this actually won’t hurt you at all compared to that.”

“I did that to undo something else,” Tony says, beginning to pace. “This…this is playing God. I’ve tried to do that before. It didn’t work so well. Yes, humans are weaker than a lot of the alien life out there. That doesn’t mean we should change it.”

He and Natasha share a look.

_The human form is inefficient, biologically speaking. We’re outmoded. But he keeps going back to it._

_When you two programmed him to protect the human race, you amazingly failed._

_They don’t need to be protected, they need to evolve. Ultron’s going to evolve._

Thinking back to the team, her family, Natasha is hit with a wave of longing and nostalgia she hasn’t felt since she was two years old and missing her parents. She sits down on the cover of the birthing pod, resting her elbows on her knees. She’s surprised that she wants to try this, wants to change herself. But she’ll only do it if Tony is on board with it.

She’s secretly pleased to see that he’s considering it, mumbling to himself about antibiotic resistance and different theories and continuums.

“Fine. Fuck it. We can’t let the mighty Captain and Banner be the only ones with scientifically modified genes,” Tony says, letting his arms drop dramatically to his sides. He nods to Aerlig and Gamora, who begin powering up the healing pods, entering data onto the screens in front of them.

“We can also change other aspects about yourselves,” Aerlig offers mischievously, feigning innocence. “Perhaps, Stark, you want to be less arrogant, better-looking…”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Tony snaps, taking a deep breath as he lays down in the healing pod. Natasha mirrors his movements in the pod beside him. “And I swear, I better not be gold when I get out of this thing.”

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid,” Gamora assures them, glaring at Aerlig.

Natasha takes a deep breath. She won’t let them know that she’s actually nervous. Is this how Steve felt, when he volunteered to be experimented on to help win the war? She thought he was brave before, but now she’s even more respectful of the risk he took.

She can’t wait to see him again. She misses going on runs with him and introducing him to new movies.

As the lids of the healing pods begin to close, Tony catches Natasha’s eye and gives her a reassuring smile. “You know, right before we fought Thanos, Cap held Thor’s hammer. Real badass movie. Remember that one party eight years ago, courtesy of yours truly—”

The lids snap shut, and suddenly Natasha is left alone with her own thoughts. Steve was worthy enough to wield the god of thunder’s weapon. She’s about to get Sovereign DNA in her to make her stronger. She’s going to get home.

She can’t help it. She laughs.

~

“Okay, that was my first and last time getting us breakfast,” Steve says, heaving a bag onto the bed and setting a tray with three cups on the bedside table. “Who knew you could become a rewards member for a coffee place?”

“Those of us who were born after Starbucks was founded,” Sam answers, pulling a box of pastries from the bag. He selects a croissant before biting into it. “Mmm. You know, I’m not too fond of this country, but at least they do American fast food right.”

“Everyone does American fast food right if you add enough sugar and fat,” Natasha retorts, rolling her eyes good-naturedly, grabbing one of the coffees and balancing it next to her on the bed where she’s sitting with Sam.

“Uh, I beg to differ. When we were hiding out in Indonesia? My Frappuccino was _not_ agreeing with me when we were working out later.”

“That’s because you ordered a Frappuccino.”

Steve picks a bagel for himself and opens up his laptop. “Have you guys been watching any American news lately? That spider-kid was on last week.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t some copycat trying to imitate him?” Natasha asks.

She’s chastising herself internally for not catching that. She’s been trying to keep tabs on everyone’s whereabouts who was involved at the airport in Germany, but it’s been difficult being on the run with Steve and Sam for a few months. A bed to sleep on is never guaranteed, much less daily Internet or TV connections.

“He was holding a broken ferry together with his web stuff,” Steve says. “Pretty sure it was him.”

Natasha considers this. She hadn’t missed the protectiveness Tony had shown for the kid in Germany. When she’d had the time, she researched Spider-Man more, finding out his real name was Peter Parker and he lived with his aunt in an apartment complex in downtown Queens. She could recognize that he wanted to keep his real identity a secret, so she hadn’t told anyone else. She could relate to that.

Sam finishes off his croissant and smacks his lips together dramatically. “So what’s on the agenda for today? I’m thinking we hit the Jacuzzi, take full advantage of the free Wi-Fi, and then order room service for dinner tonight. The chicken Milanese sounds nice.”

The three of them are silent for a minute. Natasha imagines what it would be like if this were real: just three friends spending a relaxing day at their hotel, enjoying their vacation, and definitely not on the run from the United States government or searching for remaining Hydra bunkers.

“I wouldn’t mind trying the gnocchi,” she muses.

Steve turns his laptop around, showing shaky video footage of one of the Hydra operatives they’ve been trailing for the last couple of days, effectively putting an end to the joking vibe. “Van de Berg was there at this explosion. Four blocks north of here, ten minutes ago.”

Natasha and Sam have their shoes on, weapons ready and strapped on to their suits, ready to go before Steve has finished speaking. Natasha pulls her newly blonde hair into a ponytail. “I’ll take the bike. Sam, you flying?”

Sam nods in affirmation. He taps the wings on his back and climbs through their hotel window onto the small balcony. “Catch y’all there.” He dives off, disappearing from sight for a moment, before flying up and away toward the explosion.

Natasha can already hear frantic screams from people on the streets below. She nods at Steve. “You good?”

Steve gives her a tight smile, nodding. “Yeah. I’ll take the Jeep. Rendezvous at Meeting Point B.” He turns and exits the hotel room, leaving Natasha alone for a second with her thoughts.

She remembers just months ago, having meals with everyone around the table at the compound. She remembers visiting Clint and Laura and the kids every weekend. She remembers learning Sokovian with Wanda. She remembers all of that ending, so quickly, too quickly. Remembers telling Vision and Wanda to look after each other, telling Rhodey she hoped all was going well with physical therapy and to tell Tony she says hello. Going further back, she remembers learning through a damn computer in Jersey that the organization she thought was helping her wipe the red out of her ledger was actually doing the exact opposite.

_Your death amounts to the same as your life—a zero sum._

Goddammit. She didn’t even get to try her coffee.

~

“Come on, Natasha, get up.”

She opens her eyes. Gamora is staring down at her intently, feeling for a pulse on her neck.

“That was only a couple of minutes. That’s it?” she asks. “Is Tony okay?”

“Tony Stark is more than okay. I believe Forbes once called him this generation’s Carnegie, but I personally vouch for Rockefeller,” the man in question answers, walking over to her. He helps her sit up and gives her a tired smile.

Natasha flexes her muscles. She feels sore, and tired too, but underneath that…

She feels different. She’s not sure how yet.

Aerlig studies her. “How do you feel?”

“I’ve had worse,” Natasha says.

“So how does this work?” Tony asks. “Or, I’m sorry. Since this has never been before, how do you _predict_ this is going to work?”

Aerlig shrugs his shoulders. “We are not the council. We can’t give you powers you didn’t have before or alter your actual minds. Your bodies are simply…enhanced. You’ll be able to run faster. Hit harder, and likewise take harder hits. Being ejected from a ship in the middle of space won’t immediately kill you. Live longer.”

“How much longer?” Natasha questions. She doesn’t want to spend an eternity getting back to Earth only to find that everyone she’s been wanting to get back to is dead and gone.

“I don’t know,” Aerlig answers dryly.

Suddenly, Al-Bedo enters the room, looking worried.

Gamora pulls Natasha and Tony to their feet. “What is it? Is someone coming?”

“Um…yes. It’s Adam,” Al-Bedo says, and everyone immediately relaxes.

“Okay. That’s fine. We’ll get him to take us back to his quarters,” Gamora decides, pulling on a gold veil to disguise her face. Natasha and Tony follow suit. “We all need to rest after that mission. Especially these two.”

Al-Bedo shifts nervously. “Yeah…except…”

“Oh, spit it out, already,” Aerlig scoffs. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s like, two Adam’s,” Al-Bedo answers, sounding unsure of himself. “And a woman.”

Gamora swears. “He sold us out.” She turns to Tony. “How do you activate the cloaking devices?”

Tony reaches into one of the bags they’d brought on the mission. He pulls three black, long cloaks out, tossing one to Natasha and one to Gamora.

“It just requires a significant kinesthetic change,” Tony explains. “So, wave your arm, pull on the hood, whatever. You just do this—“ He pulls on the hood to demonstrate, and consequently disappears. “–and voila!”

Gamora and Natasha follow suit, disappearing under their cloaks. Natasha looks down at herself. It’s one of the most surreal things she’s experienced, and that’s counting time travelling. She can barely make out the outline of her own body.

The door opens, and Adam walks in, looking refreshed and unsettlingly calm. He’s wearing a black tactical suit and a regal-looking red and gold cape. Behind him is a Sovereign that looks nearly identical to him and is wearing a similar tactical suit sans the cape. His hair, however, instead of being gold, is a shocking shade of white. A woman trails in last, dressed in white armor and a cape similar to Adam’s.

“Hey, bud! Glad to see you’re alright,” Al-Bedo says nervously, glancing at Aerlig, who has slowly reached behind his back to clutch a knfe. This makes Natasha uneasy. If he doesn’t even trust these Sovereign…

“Hello, Al-Bedo. I had an enlightenment while in the healing pod,” Adam says, gesturing to his companions. “I’ve been striving to be a logical hero, someone who does good for all. But that’s hard to do when emotions cloud my judgement, like when I agreed to help the Zehoberei and the humans in exchange for their help. That was breaking the rules.”

“A sin,” the woman chimes in, eyes twinkling.

“Yes,” Adam agrees amicably.

Natasha knows Gamora is immediately to her left; she can hear her breathing if she concentrates hard enough. She doesn’t know where Tony is in the room, though, and these newcomers don’t look like good news for them.

“What did you do?” Aerlig asks cautiously, taking a few steps to his left. If Natasha isn’t mistaken, he goes there to effectively block her and Gamora. “I’m guessing whatever it is, the High Priestess would not approve.”

“She wouldn’t,” the man behind Adam cackles. “She’s dumb enough to trust Adam on his own.”

Adam raises his chin proudly. “I effectively eliminated good and evil from myself,” he reveals. “I am now solely a being of logic. I can now go forward with my goal of helping people without being anchored down by my emotions.”

Everything in Natasha is screaming at her to run. There’s only one door, and Adam and his entourage are blocking it. She considers using her blaster to create another exit, but she doesn’t want to attract any more unwanted attention.

She slowly reaches out her left hand to Gamora’s. She gives a simple tug, conveying a simple message: _Let’s find a way out._

The two women hold hands, slowly backing away from Adam and his two companions. Natasha reaches her right hand out, hoping to bump into Tony, but grasps nothing but air. She looks around, trying to locate any part of the air that seems abnormal, but she can’t. These cloaking devices are good.

“So these are your good and evil, manifested,” Aerlig muses.

“Precisely,” the woman answers, donning a sickly sweet smile. “I am the Goddess, the manifestation of good. I wish to create peace and eradicate sin.”

“Isn’t that _your_ goal?” Al-Bedo asks Adam. Natasha notices he’s gripping his knife behind his back. She lets go of Gamora’s hand and grabs the blaster from her belt, expecting a fight.

“My goal is to create a better world. Sometimes that means you can’t always be good,” Adam replies simply. “I wish to be a hero. I cannot do that if I am driven by my good emotions to help everyone, or driven by my evil emotions to defy direct orders. Magus—” He rests a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “—is my evil incarnate.” He cocks his head. “Speaking of evil, where _are_ the stowaways?”

Before anyone can get a chance to answer, he’s hit with a huge beam, exploding at his feet and blowing his two new partners to the ground. The air shimmers for a minute as Tony rips off the hood of his cloak and glances frantically at Aerlig.

“Where’s Nat and Gamora?” he yells.

Natasha and Gamora whip off their hoods, running to him. Natasha takes a split second to glance down at Adam, the Goddess, and Magus, who are quickly getting to their feet. She pushes Gamora and Tony out the door as fast as she can, slamming it behind them.

The three take off sprinting down the hall with no unanimous destination.

“What was that?” Natasha shouts to Tony.

“Upgraded the blasters!” Tony yells back.

Gamora, at the front, makes a sharp right turn. “We need to get to the ship!”

They turn down another hall and run into four Sovereign civilians who look at them peculiarly. Natasha steps forward. She knows she can convince them that she’s simply a visitor, that they don’t need to call for security.

She isn’t too sure about Tony or Gamora, though.

“Hello,” she says casually, as if they’re in no rush. “Ayesha tried to send us toward the ships, but the layout is just so different from where we’re from, we got a little lost. Do you know where they are?” She makes herself taller, her stance more confident. She might hate the Red Room, but they taught her useful lessons, such as not only how to imitate another person, but how to _become_ another person.

The civilians instantly relax. One of the women points down the hall.

“Down there and to the left,” she offers. “There’s a guard outside, but he’ll just have to confirm with the council that the High Priestess sent you, and you’ll be allowed in.”

“Thank you so much!” Natasha tells her cheerily. She begins walking down the hall at a leisurely pace. She can sense Gamora’s impatience and Tony’s anxiety behind her, but they have to commit to this so as not to arouse suspicion.

The second they turn the corner and the civilians are out of sight, Natasha breaks into a run again, Tony and Gamora following suit. Sure enough, there is a guard outside a large glass door with ships on the other side. These ones are larger than the one they’d taken on the mission to Kallu, with visible gun ports decked with heavy artillery.

Natasha rushes the guard who’s only just noticed them. She punches him in the face and then prepares to kick him in the stomach and flip him over, but after the punch, he’s knocked back into the wall, creating a human-shaped dent in it. He doesn’t get back up.

Natasha stares at her fist in shock. It’s not red in the slightest, and she feels no throbbing. She’s never punched someone hard enough to dent a wall before, let alone a _Sovereign alien_.

Tony and Gamora stare at her also.

“I guess it worked,” Tony says after a pause.

“That one’s closest to the exit. Let’s go!” Gamora says, snapping them out of their trance.

They’re running up the ramp when suddenly, Aerlig materializes out of thin air and blocks the doorway, a mischievous grin on his face.

“Going so soon?” he asks.

Tony swings at Aerlig, who clearly doesn’t expect to be hit and easily sidesteps the movement. But faster than Natasha’s ever seen him move, Tony pivots and uses his left leg to kick Aerlig down and his right arm to grab Aerlig’s throat.

“Move it or lose it, Prospero,” Tony snaps.

Aerlig doesn’t reply, too stunned to move. Natasha takes advantage of his hesitation and pushes past him, boarding the ship. Gamora follows right behind her, and Tony drags Aerlig with them, closing the door behind them.

Gamora hops into the pilot seat, powering up the ship and activating the guns at the front. Tony joins her in the co-pilot seat. Natasha opens the lockers lining the interior the ship, checking for weapons and food. There’s plenty to last them a few weeks.

The only problem is she has no idea where they’re going.

Gamora easily flies the ship through the opening for the exit and out into space. Natasha breathes a sigh of relief. It was suspicious that Adam hadn’t chased after them or came with Aerlig to stop them, but they were lucky for now. Speaking of which…

“Change back,” Natasha demands, kicking Loki’s shoe.

He glares up at her from his seated position on the ground. “I beg your pardon?”

“To your true self. I didn’t think it was possible, but I like this version of you even less than the original.”

Loki gives her an evil grin. “Well, if you insist on my original form, Agent, I am compelled to oblige.”

He closes his eyes for a moment. Natasha watches as his skin morphs from solid gold to a pale shade of blue-purple and his eyes glow red. She’s startled by it, and a little unnerved, but her body language portrays nothing about her thoughts. She’s the one calling the shots here, not Loki.

“What the hell?” she says, crossing her arms, waiting for an explanation.

Tony glances backwards at her voice. When his eyes rest on Loki, he whistles. “You know, I have to admit, it’s not worse than the greasy black mess you had back in New York. I mean, does Asgard even get conditioner or—”

“You’re a Frost Giant,” Gamora says, her tone accusatory. She beckons for Tony to take over in the pilot’s seat as she stands up and walks over to Natasha and Loki. “From Jotunheim. I heard Laufey was killed several years ago.”

“He might have been, in your world,” Loki sneers, shifting back to his human form, the one Natasha is familiar with. She fights the urge to punch him in the face. “As I told your dear spider earlier, this isn’t the exact dimension that you know.”

“What?” Gamora stonily breathes, turning to Natasha. “You _knew_ and you kept this from us?”

Natasha raises her chin. She likes Gamora. Their goals are compatible with each other and she’s a worthy opponent. If they both hadn’t fallen to their deaths on Vormir, Natasha thinks they might have even been friends at one point.

But Natasha’s friends know her. They know she always does things for a reason. It’s something a few of them have had to learn the hard way…but they learn. Eventually.

_Boy you’re good. You are mind-blowingly duplicitous. How do you do it? You just tear things—you’re a triple imposter. I’ve never seen anything like it. Is there anything real about you?_

_You know, it’s kind of hard to trust someone when you don’t know who that someone is._

_Loki’s manipulating you. / And you’ve been doing what, exactly?_

“There wasn’t exactly a good time,” Natasha answers steadily, raising an eyebrow.

Gamora scoffs and stomps back over to the front of the ship. She silently stands beside Tony until he gets the hint and gives up the pilot seat to her and takes the opportunity to walk down the few steps that lead into an open area with a wide view from the side of the ship.

Natasha internally sighs. Gamora has every right to be upset, but Natasha knows withholding the information about Loki was the right thing to do. Gamora is a warrior, not a spy; sometimes the best way to win a fight is to not fight at all.

Natasha collapses down in the closest seat, rubbing her temples. She smirks at Loki. “Well, I hope the chaos from today will help you sleep tonight.”

“There were many rocks in the road,” Loki agrees. “Yet it’s still leading to us going home.”

“And where is home, exactly?” Natasha interrogates, leaning forward. “Gamora is trying to find one man in the galaxy who could be anywhere. Tony and I are trying to get back to Earth. And you apparently have multiple origins. Where is home for you?”

“Wherever I make it,” Loki snarls, an evil grin on his face.

Natasha sees past the façade. She knows Loki only stayed on Sovereign because they, unlike Asgard, had valued his wit and his passion for reading and research. He didn’t feel like a burden. Natasha had too much going on in her own life in 2012 to delve into the 1500 years of emotional issues between Loki and Thor, but now…

“Wherever you’re allowed to make it,” Natasha translates. “I mean, you’re not Thor. You’re no king.”

“Oh, but I was,” Loki counters, rising to his feet, towering over her sitting form. She doesn’t flinch. “You truly believe New York was going to be the worst destruction to ever befall your precious city?”

“I don’t,” Natasha answers truthfully, making Loki falter. He recovers quickly and replaces his surprise with a scowl, but Natasha has been reading people like a book before she could actually read books. “I’ve seen worse. I’ve fought worse.” She pauses. “I’ve died for worse.”

“It might’ve been worth it for this,” Tony calls, and Natasha makes a mental note to chastise him for eavesdropping later. “Nat, come here.”

Natasha walks over to the side of the ship where Tony is, secluded from the other two passengers. The entire wall is a glass window to the space outside. Natasha draws in a breath. It’s incredible. The stars up close are fiery and bright and all different colors, and she can see faraway constellations, highlighted on skies of pink and orange. Space matter floats around, bright shades of blue and purple and white, dangerously beautiful.

Tony grins at her, the stars reflecting in his eyes. His expression is so contagious Natasha can’t help but grin back, and Tony wraps an arm around her shoulder, pulling her in close to him.

“Even if this is a different dimension,” he sighs, “somewhere, someway, we saved this. You and me. They couldn’t have done it without us. We’re heroes.”

Natasha chuckles. “You are.”

“No, I’m serious,” Tony says, pulling back his arm and turning to look straight at her. If Natasha were anyone else she would shrink back at the intensity of his gaze. “Nat, I…I’m sorry.” He shakes his head and stares out the window, resting an arm up against it. “You considered me family. I considered you a part of mine, too. So did Pep. And after you…after Barton came back alone, I had to ask if you had any family. Biological, that is. And it didn’t hit me until then that you gave everything for us. And I just want you to know that I’d give everything for you, too. Thirteen years ago when you and Fury hijacked my hangover donut breakfast I wouldn’t have. But I would now.”

And if Natasha were anyone else, she would cry at his emotional words. But she’s not. She’s the Black Widow.

_I need your impression._

_You have a quiet reserve. I don’t know. You have an old soul._

The Black Widow does not show emotion. The Black Widow does not show weakness. Neither does Natalia Romanova.

But Natasha Romanoff does. Only sometimes, for certain people.

She smiles genuinely and links her arms with Tony’s. She knows he isn’t expecting a long response, knows he doesn’t like to be handed things like that. She rests her head on his shoulder. “Back at you, Stark.”

_Under different circumstances…this would be totally awesome._

As the ship meanders through the vast dimension of space, Natasha thinks, _It still is._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies if this is a little all over the place. This week was my final exams week so I would write just a few paragraphs here and there in between studying and packing. But I'm home now so hopefully I'll be able to just write in a couple sittings!! *fingers crossed*


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You are operating an unlicensed vessel in the territory of Earth,” the droid says in a metallic, accented voice. “You are being summoned to the Council for inspection and interrogation. This service has been brought to you by the Outer-Space Security Sector of Ultron.” As it speaks, it tosses a small flash drive onto the ship, and immediately the blasters power down and the steering controls lock.
> 
> Natasha gives Tony a look that’s part worried and part angry. He gives her an embarrassed grimace in return. “Oops.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the Hulk movie is no one's favorite, _but_ it is referenced in this chapter. Nothing major, though! You don't have to see the whole thing to get the reference. :) just know that Emil Blonsky was part of a black ops mission that went after a terrorist base in South America that was destroyed by the Hulk.
> 
> Also, as a side note, I'm going to start adding characters mentioned in flashbacks too in the tags as we go along, because they're all a part of Nat's and this story :) Enjoy!

Natasha wakes, feeling more well-rested than she has in a long time. She glances up at Tony, still asleep in the chair across from her. She lets herself smile, remembering what Tony had said to her several hours before. She automatically ducks her head in embarrassment even though no one is around.

She stretches her arms, still marveling at the enhanced strength they possess. She doesn’t _feel_ incredibly different. But she’s willing to bet she’s faster now, too; she can’t wait to get to Earth and challenge Steve to a race.

“Hey,” Gamora says, entering a few minutes later. She stands above Natasha. “I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to snap at you. We’re on the same side here.”

“I get it,” Natasha answers, standing. “I did what I thought was best at the time; I won’t apologize for that. I am sorry it came across like it did, though.”

Gamora studies Natasha with a calculating expression before stretching her hand out. “I respect that.”

Natasha shakes it. “Good. Feel free to get some rest. I’ll go make sure Loki isn’t trying to steer us in the wrong direction.”

“My team and I, we met Thor,” Gamora tells her. “Before we split ways to try and stop Thanos. He said that his brother was killed by my father, that he died trying to kill him.”

Natasha nods her head slowly. “Thor told us that, too.”

“So maybe Loki isn’t as bad as you’re imagining,” Gamora suggests. “I know what it’s like to have a vicious sibling rivalry. People can change.”

“Thor and Loki aren’t people,” Natasha counters. She owes it to Clint and to Laura and their kids to never forgive Loki. “They’re gods. They’re Asgardians. They had thousands of years to sort their shit out, and Loki still tried to destroy an innocent planet. Whatever redeeming martyr wave he was riding when he died—” She shakes her head. “That was a different Loki. This Loki tried to destroy New York, damn near succeeded, and then used the Space Stone to hide out on Sovereign.”

Gamora nods, setting herself in the chair. “I thought you’d say as much,” she says. “I just wanted to hear it out loud. My sister was just trying to please our father; she would’ve obeyed him even if he was the embodiment of good. She and Loki aren't the same. I think I’d lose some respect for you if you had said anything different.”

Natasha gives her a smirk before turning and walking over to the pilot seats. She sits down in the co-pilot chair and studies the holographic map in front of them.

Loki glances at her curiously. She frowns at him.

“You’re going to have to train and harness your powers,” Loki tells her, uncharacteristically amiable. “Imagine. Do you know what could happen if your powers, your newfound strengths, get out of control?”

Natasha closes her eyes. She knows all too well.

_Our very strength invites challenge. Challenge incites conflict. And conflict breeds catastrophe._

When she opens her eyes, she gives Loki a tight smile, nodding. The Avengers had been torn apart over disagreement about controlling their strengths, and in the end, she’d ended up on the run, on the opposite side of Tony. She’s determined to not let that happen again.

~

“We’re thirty clicks from the nearest jump to the Orion Arm,” Loki announces.

Natasha taps the keys Loki had shown her earlier. She takes a deep breath. They’re so close.

She immediately chastises herself for being so positive, so arrogant. Success is circumstantial.

_Regimes fall every day._

“Twenty,” she reads.

Behind them, Tony and Gamora lean forward in their seats. Natasha wants to tell them they have jobs to do, organizing all the weapons aboard and preparing the ship’s blasters in case they need them, but the anxiety in the ship is so high she can almost feel it. She decides to let them off the hook for now.

“Ten,” Loki says.

It doesn’t escape Natasha’s attention that he, too, is leaning forward anxiously. Natasha considers this and realizes his apprehension is warranted; this Loki was never punished for his crimes against New York. Someone will definitely do something about that.

If no one does, she will.

“Approaching jump,” Natasha says, gripping her seat tightly, “in three, two, one.”

The feeling of jumping in a spaceship is one Natasha does not want to get accustomed to. But if all goes to plan, she reasons, she won’t have to.

The four of them are silent. Loki pulls up an enhanced, closer map of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way and indicates their location on it.

“Just a few minutes and we’ll be looking at your planet,” he interprets.

Natasha looks back at Tony, who has been uncharacteristically silent. He notices her gaze and immediately gives her a smile and thumbs up before looking back out the window. Natasha sympathetically smiles at him. He’s worried and trying to hide it and she can’t blame him. He has no idea if his daughter is alive in this reality.

Gamora pulls up a map in front of herself. Natasha reads it; it’s a map of the surrounding galaxy, not focused just on Earth.

“Once we find our people and acquire the right tech, we’ll find your guy,” Natasha promises her. She’d grown to like Nebula and Rocket over the last five years; they’d played a major part in ensuring any nasty space threats didn’t come too close to Earth, a planet rendered defenseless after Thanos.

Gamora gives her a small smile in thanks.

“Alright, Iceman, any day now,” Tony quips, patting the back of Loki’s chair. “I stay in space any longer my heart’s going to atrophy.”

“There seems to be some sort of barrier,” Loki grumbles, fiddling with the controls.

Natasha looks out the window. Earth appears as it normally does, and if anything, the greens and blues seem more vivid. She takes this as a good sign; the planet at least hasn’t been destroyed. But upon further inspection, she notices a faint red glow around the planet, something that is definitely not the Earth _she_ knows.

“Your planet doesn’t normally have that red, correct?” Gamora asks, pulling up a magnified view of the planet in front of them. “It appears to be some sort of force field. A defense.”

“A shield,” Natasha whispers. She has an idea, a bad idea, of what this could possibly be. She doesn’t want to believe it.

_I see a suit of armor around the world._

_Peace in our time. Imagine that._

Suddenly, something zooms by. Immediately, Gamora springs out of her chair and to the controls for the ship’s outer blasters, positioning them at the object that is now floating directly in front of the ship.

Natasha looks at the object. It has a humanoid structure, and…

Shit. It’s one of Tony’s Iron Legion droids.

“Stark, that looks like one of your—“ Loki begins, but is cut off by the Iron Legion droid raising its arm, pointing a glowing hand at the ship, which Natasha knows means it could easily blow them up.

“You are operating an unlicensed vessel in the territory of Earth,” the droid says in a metallic, accented voice. “You are being summoned to the Council for inspection and interrogation. This service has been brought to you by the Outer-Space Security Sector of Ultron.” As it speaks, it tosses a small flash drive onto the ship, and immediately the blasters power down and the steering controls lock.

Natasha gives Tony a look that’s part worried and part angry. He gives her an embarrassed grimace in return. “Oops.”

~

“Romanoff, with me.”

Natasha hops to her feet immediately, her posture straight and perfect. “Sir.”

“Cut that bullshit, we both know you didn’t want to stand up,” Nick Fury gripes, waving his hand at her. Natasha stifles a smile. When he blatantly calls out the things his agents are doing, including herself, it makes Natasha respect him more, actually makes her want to stand up when he enters a room.

Standing up for a man. Madame B would have a heart attack if she actually possessed a heart.

“Where are we going, sir?” Natasha asks innocently. She smirks at him when he glares at her.

“Last I checked, you weren’t my thong. Don’t be up my ass,” Fury answers readily, striding past her to a computer. He pulls up a map and prints it out, handing the papers to her. Louisiana. “You know how to fly a Quinjet?”

She doesn’t, but Natasha is nothing if not adaptable. She’s a fast learner. “Yes, sir. What’s in Louisiana?”

“I guess you’ll see when we get there, won’t you?” Fury asks, squinting his eyes at her, his lip twitching.

Natasha follows him out the door. This is one of the many differences between Fury and Madame B, she has come to learn. Fury doesn’t disclose a lot of information to those under him, and everyone rolls with it because they respect him. Madame B used to reveal _everything_ , sometimes too much, about the girls’ missions, and they complied because they would be killed if they made a mistake.

SHIELD doesn’t kill workers who make mistakes. Or if they do, Natasha wouldn’t know. She hasn’t made a mistake yet. She doesn’t plan on it, either.

Fury leads her to one of SHIELD’s new Quinjets. Natasha is given no time to marvel at it before Fury is ushering her aboard and into the pilot seat.

“I’ve got a phone call to make. Put these headphones on; it’s connected to all the nearby airports on our way to Louisiana. We don’t want anybody seeing us.”

“Of course, sir,” Natasha obediently agrees.

If she’d been given more time to stew on what she’s doing, she might even be disgusted that she so willingly agrees with the man in charge of the organization that tried to assassinate her two years prior. But Fury wastes no time.

Natasha figures out how to fly the Quinjet easily enough. It’s not too different from a plane, but it is much faster and has additional features that aren’t on normal planes, like guns and a camouflage option.

The headphones Fury has given her cancel out a lot of the background noise from the Quinjet, so Natasha can’t hear what Fury is saying on the phone next to her. But she was taught to read lips when she was six, so she could tell if Madame B was ever speaking to someone else about her.

“–the ten year anniversary. Time really is a bitch, isn’t it?” Fury chuckles into the phone.

Natasha silently wonders what he’s talking about. Fury isn’t married, at least not that she’s heard of.

“Felt like the best time to stop by to take some of that stuff,” he continues. “I still have the pager she gave me, too. Wonder if this would constitute being an emergency so she could come down.”

Natasha continues flying to the destination as Fury hangs up the phone. It sounds like a simple collection mission, picking up some supplies. Natasha silently hopes it won’t take long. Laura is pregnant, due any day now, and she wants to be by her side.

She’s surprised that she wants to. She tries not to think about it too much.

“So,” she says after a few minutes of silence. “Why me?” She’s never been on a mission with Fury alone before; not many agents have.

“I may only have one working eye, but that doesn’t mean I don’t see things,” Fury answers. Natasha thinks this is maybe the most honest he’s ever been to her in the two years she’s been at SHIELD. “Ever since you got here two years ago, people haven’t stopped talking about you. Even when they’re saying nothing…from their posture, their decisions, all make it clear you are someone they respect.”

“Or fear,” Natasha counters. She could count on her hand the number of colleagues of hers she actually felt respected by.

“Respect, fear. Same thing.”

Natasha thinks of Fury and then Madame B. She shakes her head slightly. “It’s not.”

Fury curiously eyes her but says nothing. Natasha appreciates it.

She lands the Quinjet in the spacious backyard of a house in Louisiana in a small neighborhood. She studies the house and can faintly see a woman, probably in her forties, and her college-age looking daughter.

“Your family?” Natasha asks, appearing aloof, although her heart is clenching. It’s October of 2005, and Laura is due any day now to have her and Clint’s first child. They’d asked Natasha to be the godmother, which had triggered emotions in Natasha she didn’t realize she was capable of having.

“Nope,” Fury answers vaguely, smirking.

He grabs his briefcase and stands up. Natasha unbuckles and prepares to follow him, but he stops her. “This one’s just me. I’ll be quick. Stay here, keep watch.”

Natasha waits patiently. She debates calling Laura to see how she and the baby doing and tell her she gets to go on a solo mission with Fury, but Laura’s parents had flown in and were staying at the farm for a couple of weeks, and she doesn’t want to add to the chaos.

Fury returns several minutes later with pieces of alien-looking technology. Natasha leans forward to inspect them, but Fury throws them in a box and closes the lid before she can get any closer.

“Not time to open this can of worms just yet,” he explains. “This was just a pit stop. Now we’re going to South America.” He enters new coordinates into the Quinjet’s GPS, and Natasha takes off.

They land in a secluded field on the outskirts of a small village. Natasha follows Fury outside as he begins walking.

“There’s a black ops team here trying to take down a terrorist base,” Fury tells her, pointing to the remains of what was once a building. Natasha looks around; there’s not any people around, which is strange. They must be hiding from something.

“So the black ops took out the cartel, and we’re looking for the ones who escaped?” Natasha surmises.

“Not exactly,” Fury replies. He points to a group of men walking into their view near the destroyed base. “We need to stall them from finding the base. “

“Stall them?” Natasha confirms. She’s careful about not showing her confusion. Stalling an operation meant to find terrorists is the type of mission the Red Room might have given her; she doesn’t expect this sort of thing from SHIELD.

“Do you trust me, Agent Romanoff?” Fury asks, facing her. His one good eye stares hard at her, and she’s surprised to feel that she does trust him.

“Lead the way, sir.”

“That there is Emil Blonsky,” he says, pointing to a blond man at the front of the group giving orders. “He’s good. Smart. Veteran soldier. Once they find this base they’re going to contact General Ross. That’s inevitable; we just need to delay them a bit longer.”

Natasha’s mind whirls. General Thaddeus Ross works for the military; she read something recently about him being appointed to head a project trying to recreate the serum that turned Steve Rogers into Captain America.

She wants to scoff. Many people tried to recreate the serum, the KGB included. None of their projects ever quite turned out like Captain America.

Despite her confusion, Natasha agrees. She takes point on Blonsky while Fury takes the alien-looking tech with him to take on the other three men there.

Blonsky’s back is to her when she silently creeps up behind him and leaps onto his shoulders, wrapping her thighs around his neck and squeezing tightly. As he gasps for air, she reaches down and disarms him, taking his weapon into her own hands. She hits him in the back of the head, hard, enough to knock him unconscious but not hard enough to kill him. She runs over to the cars the unit had come in on and slashes three of each vehicle’s tires. She’s about to begin rummaging through them for their contents before she hears a pained grunt coming from Fury.

Natasha sprints over to him. Two of the men are laying on the ground, but a third has one of the weapons Fury had picked up from Louisiana, pointing it at Fury, who’s kneeling on the ground, bleeding. It’s the first time Natasha has ever seen him look scared. What the hell can that weapon do?

Fury catches her eyes with his one and gives her a subtle shake of the head. Whatever it can do, it’s bad. Natasha ignores his warning; she’s not going to let her superior die, especially not on her watch, and also because she’s grown to like the man. She steps forward, making the man spin around and point the weapon at her.

She cocks her head innocently. She may be wearing a SHIELD tactical suit while holding an M-16, but one of the lessons Madame B taught her that will always stick with her is that men will underestimate her because she’s a woman. Natasha takes full advantage of that. He lowers the weapon just a fraction for a second, but that’s all she needs. She runs forward, kicking the weapon out of his hands and towards Fury. She tackles him to the ground, swinging her legs up to straddle his chest and point the assault rifle at his face.

Natasha takes a second to look up to check on Fury. He’s slowly getting to his feet, the alien weapon firmly secure in his grip. He looks over at her and gives her an approving nod, an almost proud smile on his face that makes Natasha’s stomach turn. In the Red Room, when she had done a good job, usually someone had to die because of it. Now with SHIELD, if she does a good job, it’s just because she’s good.

_Agent Romanoff is comfortable with everything._

~

Over the last few years, Natasha had rid her life as much as possible of SHIELD once it had revealed itself to be Hydra. Any shirt or jacket with the logo was ripped up and burned, and paper documents had their logos scribbled out with a black Sharpie, courtesy of Cooper Barton. She’d felt betrayed, and she didn’t want to see the damn bird with the stripes ever again.

She was in for a rude awakening on this Earth.

Everywhere they walk, the SHIELD logo is visible. Everything dons it, from posters on streetlamps, to windows of business buildings, even stickers on cars that drove by. It’s eerie.

Natasha can sense her companions’ discomfort. Even Gamora, who has never been to Earth, looks around with caution. Although Natasha’s not sure if this stems from the SHIELD logo everywhere, like it does for herself, or the fact that Iron Legion droids fly overhead continuously, obviously monitoring everyone.

The droid that had spoken to them and powered down their ship walks ahead of them, leading them inside a large, official-looking building that definitely does not exist in Natasha and Tony’s reality. Natasha can see the outline of New York City from where they are, so she assumes they’re somewhere in New York or New Jersey.

Inside the building, they are quickly ushered into a small conference room. The droid tells them someone will be with them momentarily and then exits the room, closing and locking the door behind it.

“What the hell is going on?” Gamora asks, pointing at the door. “You _made_ that thing?”

“No!” Tony exclaims. After a beat, he backtracks. “Well, okay, _yes_ , technically, I made that thing. I made many of those…things. But I destroyed them all. And a lot of them were destroyed in…our battle with Ultron. It was an AI program our friend and I made to try and anticipate any extra-terrestrial attacks like the one that Greased Lightning over here caused.” He jerks his thumb toward Loki, who raises an eyebrow. “But he…”

“The plan failed,” Natasha deadpans, taking a seat at one of the chairs around the table in the center of the room. “They used code from the Mind Stone to create Ultron. He used Tony’s suits as hosts and decided that humans were the greatest threat to Earth and tried to get rid of us all.”

“Well, he wasn’t wrong,” Loki mumbles.

“He _was_ , actually, and it doesn’t matter what he thought, anyway, because he lost,” Tony snaps. “Or he did, in our universe.”

Gamora nods, absorbing all of the information just thrown at her. “Okay. So Ultron exists here, and it’s clearly a large part of—”

Before she can answer, the Iron Legion droid opens the door again, this time accompanied by an elderly man. The droid waits until the man enters the room before leaving again, shutting and locking the door.

Natasha studies the man. His posture is straight and strong, rare for someone of his age, and he’s dressed in an impeccable blue dress shirt tucked into khaki pants. He’s tall and was obviously once very muscular. His physique could still possibly prove to be a threat, so Natasha doesn’t let her guard down, even though she can see Gamora, Tony, and Loki already have.

Old men used to run the Red Room, used to run Madame B. She knows how dangerous they can be.

But when her eyes move up to his face, Natasha’s breath catches in her throat. The man has bright blue eyes and a defined jaw, giving way to a friendly smile, a _familiar_ smile…

“The man out of time,” she whispers, struggling to not let her voice waver. “It’s been a minute.”

“Hey, Nat,” Steve Rogers says, opening his arms for a hug.

Natasha doesn’t hesitate to step forward and wrap her arms around his waist tenderly, burying her face in the crook of his arm. He squeezes back, chuckling. “I’m not going to break, you know. I was once a super soldier.”

Tony inhales sharply. “That’s…Cap? What happened?” Even as he says this, he’s crossing the room, standing next to Natasha and joining their hug.

Natasha doesn’t even try to stop her eyes from watering now. She knew when she was climbing up the mountain with Clint that she was going to die. She never thought she’d see anyone ever again, let alone be wrapped up in a bear hug in between Captain America and Iron Man in an alternate reality.

After they finish hugging, Natasha gestures to Gamora and Loki. “Steve, this is Gamora. And you already know—”

“Loki,” Steve says, a sad smile on his face. “Although I don’t think the Loki _I_ know, correct?”

“You would be correct, Captain,” Loki replies, giving an approving smile to Steve. “I see your time here has made you wiser.”

Steve’s small smile fades. “Right. About that…” He gestures to the table, indicating for everyone to sit down. “I have a lot to tell you.”

Natasha sits and rests her elbows on the table, biting her lip. She glances around at everyone else. Steve sits patiently, clearly waiting for someone to ask the questions they all know they have. Natasha decides to go first and ask broader, big-picture questions. She’ll ask personal ones in private. She doesn’t need everyone knowing what’s on her mind.

“SHIELD’s everywhere. Why?”

“Instead of jumping back to 2023 after returning the Stones, I jumped back to be with Peggy,” Steve says, smiling fondly. His expression sobers. “At the time, Hydra wasn’t as big within SHIELD, so we were able to keep SHIELD...well, SHIELD. So, SHIELD always stayed standing. Tony—" He waves his hand at Tony. “Not you, this reality’s Tony, became the de facto leader of the Avengers since I was an old man. I even got some of the people we met after New York in our reality onto the Avengers before New York here in this reality. I made sure SHIELD never found this reality’s Steve in the ice. But a lot of stuff is similar to what we know—Loki attacked New York, didn’t succeed, went back to Asgard. But Tony still created Ultron, a little differently so he doesn’t see humanity as a threat, but Ultron and SHIELD have become a sort of…omnipresent system. Worldwide, too—the UN signed off on Ultron protecting the whole planet.”

Natasha shivers. Steve talks about it so casually, probably because he’s been living it for over seventy years, but the idea that SHIELD has such a public presence when in her reality they used to operate more in the dark seems so uncanny. By the way Steve avoids their eyes, it’s obvious he’s hiding something else from them too, but Natasha will weasel it out of him eventually. He’s always been a terrible liar.

“So, if it’s 2023 now—“ Tony pauses for Steve’s nod of confirmation, “—you should be about 114 years old. Why are you so…spry?”

“Thanks, Tony,” Steve says dryly, huffing out a breathy laugh. “The serum, I guess. It took me quite a long time for my hair to even start graying.”

“Why were you the one to come explain this to us?” Loki asks suddenly. “Do they know we’re from an alternate reality?” He sounds worried. This Loki was never punished for his crimes, and now that they’re back on Earth with a worldwide security system, punishment is definitely a possibility. Natasha hopes it becomes a reality.

She also doesn’t miss how he uses the word “they,” already unconsciously establishing a dichotomy between them and SHIELD. That can’t be good.

“Uh, no, I don’t think so,” Steve answers, and by Loki’s eye roll it’s clear he regrets his comment about becoming wiser. “After Peggy passed a few years ago, I just started volunteering here more, working as a visitors’ guide. I saw you guys on the monitors and knew you must be from my reality.” He gives them a watery smile, turning to Natasha and Tony. “It is so good to see you guys. I still can’t thank you enough for what you did.”

“Why would you thank us?” Tony suddenly demands, standing up, waving his arms around. “You didn’t even stick around long enough to see if what we _died for_ worked! You got the opportunity to leave everyone behind, and you just _left_.” He shakes his head. “Every time we need you, you just leave!”

His chest is heaving by the time he’s finished speaking. Natasha places a hand around his wrist, meant to be a comfort, but doubling as a warning.

Steve frowns. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Tony. I am. But I was already in the wrong time, technically. This was something I needed to do for myself.”

Gamora clears her throat to speak as Tony sits back down in his chair, crossing his arms. “So where we do we go now? Our plan when we all found each other was to get everyone home. Will they be allowed to stay here? And where are any ships? I need to get back into space and try and find my family.”

Steve contemplates this. “Well, you'll need to eventually speak to the Council because you got caught trespassing. But I worked here for a long time and they listen to me, so I can delay your meeting by a couple days until we can figure out what to say.”

“We’ll figure that out later, Steve. Thanks for all your answers,” Natasha agrees, recognizing the growing tension in the room. “Do you think you could sign us out now so that droid doesn’t come looking for us and let us crash at your place?”

“Of course,” Steve answers. “My shift just ended, anyway. You can follow me to my car.”

The four of them file out behind Steve to the parking lot behind the building. Loki, Gamora, and Tony slowly trail behind him, obviously weary about going to his house, but Natasha stays right behind Steve on his left, like Sam had always done to him, like she had always done to Clint. Old habits die hard.

And sometimes they die and come to another reality.

When they reach Steve’s car, Tony scrambles for the passenger seat, and Gamora and Loki climb into the backseat. Steve is about to start walking toward the driver’s side when Natasha grabs his arm, stopping him. She needs to ask the question that’s been on her mind, the main reason she had been so intent on getting home.

“How are the Barton’s here? Can you take me to see them?”

Steve pauses and gives her an apologetic shake of the head. “Nat, I don’t think is the time for that…”

“Tell me. Please,” she grits out. “I need to know they’re okay.”

“They’re good. They’re okay. Clint works for SHIELD,” Steve says slowly. “But I don’t think he’d want to see you.”

A weight Natasha didn’t know had been on her shoulders is lifted at the affirmation that they’re okay. “Good. Why wouldn’t he want to see me? Did I beat him up too badly sparring?” She jokingly smirks.

“Not exactly,” Steve warns. “Because Hydra never really grew inside SHIELD here, they went even deeper underground. SHIELD is global, so everything affiliated with Hydra and anti-Ultron groups have to be even more secretive and selective with everyone working for them. Peggy and I worked hard to stop some of them, but I don’t think it’ll ever be possible to get them all. And between the government, Ultron, and SHIELD—”

“Steve,” Natasha interrupts. “Just tell me. What happened?”

“It’s what didn’t happen,” Steve says, looking at her with sad, almost pitiful eyes before pausing again. Natasha considers punching him in the face, even if he is an old man now.

“And what didn’t happen?” she presses impatiently.

“Clint wasn’t able to convince you to leave the Red Room, to go straight,” Steve blurts. “In this reality, the Black Widow is one of the best assassins in the world, one of the only true internal threats against SHIELD.”

And just like that, the weight is back on Natasha’s shoulders, heavier than ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, just to clarify, this is the alternate reality of Earth where Steve grows old with Peggy. In _this_ reality, in my mind, he did continue doing some work as Captain America for a little bit, but eventually was content to get a simple job and watch the kids while Peggy is a badass at SHIELD as usual. (This is based off of a mix of what the directors and writers have said along with my own interpretation. The directors say Steve goes back to an alternate universe but the writers say it’s the same timeline and the guy Peggy marries and has kids with is Steve, but even when Tony, Steve, Scott, and Bruce went back to 2012, but the Ancient One tells Bruce him taking the stone will affect “her” reality if it saves “his,” so I decided to roll with that and say it’s alternate too. Another thing that made me choose this was Nebula not dying when she killed her 2014 self. It is the “same” Nebula like Thanos says, but the 2 different times create 2 different realities).
> 
> I know there’s a lot of different theories and arguments, but this is one that made sense to me and works with the story. I hope this made a little bit of sense. I’ll try and explain more as much as possible through the characters in upcoming chapters :) As always, thank you so much for reading! It means the world.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve rests his hand gingerly on her shoulder to whisper in her ear. “Nat, I once watched these guys debate for three hours if the SHIELD logo should have straight or curved wings on the bird, and in the end, they just made two logos. Trust _me_ when I say I’ll be treated fine. And if I’m not…” He glances down to his hand that’s peeking out of his pocket, and Natasha follows his gaze. In his hand is his Pym particle, shining red and secretive. “I’ll see you back home.”
> 
> “See you in a minute,” Natasha whispers back. She nods to the Council, speaking up. “Fine. We agree to your conditions.”

Gamora peers through the blinds, scanning the street outside, before huffing and sinking into one of the chairs around the table. “There’s no one out there right now. This is the perfect opportunity to leave.”

“There’s always someone out there,” Steve mumbles. Natasha isn’t sure if his incoherent speech is due to his old age or the fear due to the ubiquitous monitoring of Ultron.

She also isn’t sure which one makes her more uncomfortable.

Tony takes a moment to stop biting his nail to rest his hands on the table and look at Steve through steely eyes. “You’re _absolutely_ certain Pepper and this reality’s Tony don’t have a child? Maybe they just had her in secret to avoid...you know.” He waves his hand above his head, implying the omnipresent Ultron of this reality.

Steve shook his head. “I’m sorry, Tony. They don’t. This reality’s Tony creates and _believes_ in Ultron. He wouldn’t hide from–“

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, Rogers,” Tony interrupts, pointing his finger at him. “Or should I say tighty-whities? That’s what people your age are rocking, no? _I_ created and believed in Ultron, too. And look. If everyone had listened to me, well.” He shakes his head, scoffing. “You told us yourself. The snap didn’t happen here.”

“But look around, Tony,” Steve says. “We lost a lot of our personal freedoms. SHIELD and Ultron monitor everything. You even have to get permission to throw a party or have a barbecue. If you’re gone for more than three days without telling anyone, people search your house and go looking for you.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” Loki asks, leaning comfortably in his seat. “Half of humanity was not killed away here. I fail to see why you’re focusing on the negatives.”

_The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity._

Natasha shivers, remembering looking down on Loki in Germany. It had been the first time she’d seen him, and she already abhorred him for what he had done to Clint.

Speaking of...

“Gamora’s right. We can’t just wait around here,” Natasha says, thinking of Clint and Laura and her alternate self that wouldn’t die to save them. “Our goal was–“

“To get home,” Loki cuts in. “There were many rocks in the road, yet it still led to you coming back home.” To illustrate his point, he gestures to Steve’s small but homey kitchen.

“We don’t belong here,” Natasha counters. “There can’t be two of us running around here. We have to go back to where we belong.”

“If the Space Stone is here, I can use it to open a portal and try and find my family in space,” Gamora notes. “We just need to get to the correct time. How did you all do it before?”

“Pym particles,” Steve answers. “And trust me, I’ve tried to get more, but Bruce is supposed to be bringing me back, so mine will work to get me home. If we just got more particles, there’s no guarantee that they’ll land you in the right reality. Plus, the Tesseract isn’t here. Thor took it back to Asgard with him and Loki back in 2012. In this world, that Ragnarok thing didn’t happen.”

“Ragnarok?” Loki questions, leaning forward with interest.

Before Steve can answer, there’s pounding at his door.

Gamora gets back up, peeking through the window at the front porch. She swears. “It’s one of the droids.”

“They probably want to question you guys today,” Steve guesses. He slowly stands to his feet. “Hide upstairs. I’ll make something up.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Steve,” Natasha says, her lips quirking up into a smile, but she’s not lying.

“Perhaps I can be of service,” Loki offers. He points to one of the many picture frames on the wall. “Are any of these people your neighbors?”

Steve nods. “The man in the green sweater, Stan. He lives down the block. He’s a writer. Everyone in the neighborhood loves him.”

Loki materializes into Stan, spinning around for approval. Natasha tries not to focus on the fact that Loki actually just _helped_ them and grabs Tony, ushering him up the stairs quickly with Gamora right behind them, while Steve goes to open the front door.

Gamora opens a small closet door and shimmies her way in, nodding to Natasha as she shuts the door behind her. Natasha pushes Tony into a small room that looks like a study, with tall shelves and a desk cluttered by piles and piles of papers. She quietly shuts the door behind them and stands behind one of the shelves while Tony scrunches down to sit behind the desk.

Downstairs, Natasha can hear one of the Iron Legion droids interrogating Steve on their whereabouts.

“I signed them out under my name. They were quite tired, so I figured they would be more up to an interview later this week,” Steve says, trying to be friendly. “They just went to explore around the neighborhood. They’ll be back later and then I can take them back to the Council.”

“That’s against protocol for visitors,” the droid reprimands. “Mr. Rogers, you have been given one warning. If this continues, you will be summoned to the Council for alternative measures.”

Loki then says something as Stan, but it’s too muffled for Natasha to hear over the sound of Tony’s labored breathing.

“Oh, God,” he moans, burying his face in his hands. “This isn’t what Ultron was supposed to be. It wasn’t. This isn’t even the right Earth. Morgan’s not here, and you’re not even friends with Barton...” He looks up at Natasha, a sad smile on his face. “Look, when we’re in front of the Council, if you can get a chance to get out of here, you take it. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay.”

Natasha kneels down in front of him, resting a hand on his shoulder. She shakes her head; this omnipresent monitoring system is obviously putting a damper on their plans, but she’s not about to leave Tony. Not now, not after everything they’ve been through.

_I don’t judge people on their worst mistakes._

“Sorry, Stark, you’re stuck with me,” she teases, shrugging her shoulders. “I’m not navigating this world without you.”

Tony gives her a genuine, relieved smile, resting his hand atop hers. It’s evident now more than ever that Tony never wanted to fly a missile into space above New York, never wanted to snap his fingers with the gauntlet, never wanted to die. But he did it because no one else could, or would, and he had to make the sacrifice play.

Natasha is almost apologetic that she didn’t recommend him for the Avengers Initiative. Almost. Everything happens for a reason.

A few minutes later, the droid leaves. Tony crawls out from behind the desk and moves toward the door to exit the study, but Natasha silently grabs him and shakes her head.

“It could be a trap, Stark. Think a little,” she whispers. “Think of all the capabilities you gave the Iron Legion. Don’t be so trusting.”

Tony gives her a look similar to one Sam would give her whenever he thought she was being over-dramatic.

_Anybody ever tell you you’re a little paranoid?_

The sound of the front door opening makes them both tense. The droid is back in the house, criticizing Steve’s overgrown trees and bushes, claiming they’re too restrictive to the interior of his home. Loki, as Stan, indignantly tells the droid that _he_ never received any warnings about his hedges, and they’re twice the size of Steve’s.

Eventually, the droid leaves again. This time, Steve calls out, “It’s all clear to come out.”

Natasha gives Tony a smug grin and follows him down the stairs, Gamora behind her.

“So,” Steve says when they’re all seated around the table. “The Council has to meet with you guys today. I told them you were just out exploring a bit, so we should be there in no later than two hours. That should give us just enough time to come up with a cover story.”

“And what, pray tell, do you think that should be?” Tony asks, raising his eyebrows.

“We’ll just tell them we were in space for a while, and we’re old friends of Steve’s,” Gamora suggests. “We all have alien DNA now. We can get them to run some tests to prove it. That’ll explain why we were in space. If this planet hasn’t had any more contact with anyone out there besides Thor and Asgard, we should be good.”

Steve furrows his eyebrows. “Alien DNA?”

“Couldn’t let you have all the fun with the enhancements, buddy,” Tony chirps, clapping Steve on the shoulder.

Natasha likes Gamora’s plan, but there’s something the green-skinned woman hasn’t thought of. Contrary to popular belief, Natasha doesn’t like being the negative one, but someone has to do it. Optimism isn’t permanent.

_The only thing permanent in life is impermanence._

“That’s not going to work,” she says.

“Why not?” Gamora asks.

“Steve, who’s on the Council?” Natasha says, turning to face him.

Steve blinks. “Uh…sometimes different additional people are brought in for certain topics. Peggy was on the Council back in the 90’s after retiring from being SHIELD’s director. I was an honorary member for a little during topics on civil wars. But the permanent members of the Council right now…” He looks up at the ceiling, thinking. “There’s a few people from other countries you all probably wouldn’t be familiar with. King T’Chaka, from Wakanda, is on it. And Ross and Tony Stark are on it, too.”

Silence ensues. Tony sighs. “Shit.” He then covers his mouth. “Oops, sorry, Cap. Just sort of slipped out; I’ll watch my language.”

Steve sighs. “Tony—”

“Is there any way we can get this reality’s Tony to be omitted from this particular Council meeting?” Natasha cuts in.

Steve shakes his head. “Unfortunately, no. Major decisions, especially ones involving apparent aliens from outer space, including one who tried to destroy New York, require a majority vote. If Tony’s not there today, the Council will be an even number.”

“I can appear as Stark,” Loki offers. “All we’d need to do is keep this reality’s Tony otherwise occupied.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. ‘Otherwise occupied?’” Tony asks, making a time-out symbol with his hands. “I don’t like the sound of that. Besides, this reality’s me is going to know he missed a meeting. Last I checked, none of your powers include being able to change people’s memories.”

Natasha considers Loki’s plan. It would work, if they can get this reality’s Tony to believe he had been in the meeting. She briefly considers just locking him up for the day until they can get an approval to leave, but she scratches that idea. Good plans take time. There’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to leave today.

Plus, Tony probably wouldn’t be too happy about locking his alternate self up.

“Wanda,” Natasha says. “She can probably manipulate his memories long enough. You think you can call her up, Steve? Does she work for SHIELD?”

“She doesn’t,” Steve answers slowly. Natasha doesn’t like his reluctant tone. “And I couldn’t call her, even if I wanted to. Because SHIELD stayed…well, SHIELD, Loki’s scepter just stayed with it. No human experimentation done. As far as I know, the Maximoff twins are just normal Sokovian civilians.”

Natasha runs her fingers through her hair, harshly enough to pull out one of the red-to-blonde strands. She fixates for a moment on her hair so she doesn’t have to think about how everything is working against them in this reality. Why did she have to get such a good hair dye? No other person she knew had dye that was still visible after five years.

“Are you still close with T’Challa?” Tony suggests. “Maybe he’ll let us crash in Wakanda for a bit. They’re guaranteed to have something to help us.”

“I’m an old man, Tony. I don’t run around with friends now. This is the most social interaction I’ve had for the last couple of weeks, actually,” Steve admits. “Even if we were friends, I don’t know that he could help us. Here, his father is still alive. King T’Chaka rules Wakanda and makes all executive decisions.”

Natasha closes her eyes for a brief moment.

_Two people in a room can get more done than a hundred._

_Unless you need to move a piano._

She opens her eyes. They definitely need to move a damn piano.

“We go to the Council. We tell them who we are and how we got here. Honesty is the best policy; we’ve learned that the hard way before,” she decides. “They’ve seen strange things before. If they don’t like people coming in from space, they shouldn’t want us to stay here too badly.”

Gamora turns to Loki. “You said you came to this reality using the Space Stone somehow. Why can’t we just use that to open a portal?”

“The Space Stone usually only opens portals to different parts of the universe, not _alternate_ universes,” Loki says. “Besides, even if we wanted to try that, we can’t. I don’t have it. Something that powerful attracts much unwanted attention. It was out of my possession before I even landed on Sovereign.”

“I agree with Natasha,” Tony notes. “I mean, one of the people deciding what will happen is _me_. What’s the worst that can happen?”

~

“Am I the only one with a brain here? Are the holographs working correctly? There’s no static? Everyone heard what was just said, correct?” The Council’s Tony Stark rambles, pacing back and forth at the front of the large meeting room. “You come here, breaking _our_ rules, and want us to help _you_? On what world does that make sense? Ours, I guess, right?”

“Tony—” Steve starts, but the Councilman raises his hand to stop him.

“First of all, only Pepper and Happy call me Tony. That’s Anthony, or Mr. Stark, or genius-who-came-up-with-this-planet’s-security-system to everyone else. Second of all, _you_ , Captain, are in direct violation for not only lying to the Iron Legion about where illegal aliens were and what they were doing, but also harboring them and abandoning your volunteer post early.”

Natasha steps forward, grabbing the attention of everyone in the room. She angles her body so that all the Council members have a clear view of her, but the hologram of King T’Chaka has the closest view. She’d always respected the king. She hopes she can continue to do so after this.

“I know this sounds far-fetched. Believe me, I can barely believe it myself, and it’s happening to me. But we’re just asking for amnesty; don’t arrest us, provide us with some tech so we can try and figure out how to get back to where we belong, and we’ll be out of your hair.”

Anthony scoffs. Behind Natasha, Tony curses under his breath.

King T’Chaka folds his hands together, the hologram flickering for a second. “You have said that other beings were threatening you, hence your seeking for a new haven. How can we be sure that you will not use our resources and leave us to deal with whatever might come our way, looking for you?”

Natasha gives him a polite smile, remembering words he’d said once, a lifetime ago, a whole world away. “Victory at the expense of the innocent is no victory at all.” She adjusts her body so that the Council all has equal sight of her; she’s now addressing all of them, no single one targeted. “Should any threat come your way because of us, we’ll do whatever we can to defend this planet.”

The Council members regard her seriously for a moment. Gamora shifts her weight on her feet next to Natasha. Loki, disguised as Thor, audibly cracks his knuckles nervously.

Finally, King T’Chaka nods. “I vote in favor. It might seem like we are losing by providing technology, but we have gained much more than it appears. The knowledge that alternate realities exist is unprecedented. This is a historic day for research.”

Slowly, the remaining members of the Council vote in favor, following T’Chaka’s lead. The last Council member to vote is, of course, Anthony Stark. Natasha would roll her eyes if he wasn’t a key part in deciding her fate.

“It is a historic day for research. We had no idea alternate realities exist,” Anthony muses, tapping his chin in mock thought. “I wonder why we didn’t know. Could it be because, maybe, someone who _knew_ this was possible _omitted_ this information?” His gaze rests on the elderly Steve.

Steve sighs. “I’m sorry, Stark. It wasn’t my place to tell. I had no idea they were going to come here. I just came to live a life with Peggy.”

“Yes, and may she rest in peace. But,” Anthony continues, his hands waving, “your late wife was one of the ones who voted in favor of SHIELD and Ultron working together. And you were breaking the rules that she helped put in place by not telling us where you’re really from, Captain.” He pauses. “So that makes you over a hundred years old, huh? And you still haven’t been promoted? Not even Major America or Colonel America? Jeez, by this age, I’d have expected you to be at least General America, with the way my dad used to talk about you.”

Tony steps forward. Natasha almost hates the fact that she’s not shaken by two of the same person facing each other.

“Look—can I call you Tony, since I am you? I’m gonna call you Tony,” he says. “I know you don’t want to help us. Hell, I wouldn’t want to help us if I were you. But I _have_ to get back, to _my_ Pepper. We…” His voice cracks. “We have a _daughter_.”

This immediately makes Anthony freeze. He stares at Tony seriously. “You’re shitting me.”

“I’m not,” Tony says, a watery smile on his face. “Her name is Morgan.”

Anthony shakes his head, a shocked expression on his face, but his mouth is smiling. “After Pepper’s weird uncle?”

“She prefers the term ‘eccentric,’ but yes. That’s the one.”

Anthony looks around at the other Council members. “Okay. Fine. I vote in favor of helping these guys, but under some conditions. First, there are some researchers, myself included, who would like to study time travel and alternate realities further. You all will help with that before we give you any ship or develop any new tech for you. Second, there’s a mission SHIELD has had sitting in the dust for awhile, too big for its normal agents, but too small for the entirety of the Avengers. I think you would be perfect to complete it, Natasha, you said? And…me.”

Natasha regards Anthony curiously. He seems serious enough, but if what Steve said is true and that she wasn’t on the Avengers here, wasn’t even on the good guys’ side, how would he know she would be perfect for the mission? She prepares to ask, but Loki, as his brother, beats her to it.

“This sounds like a mighty plan, friends. I, the god of thunder, approve,” he boasts, grinning exaggeratedly. Natasha bites her tongue; even she could do a better Thor impression. “The lady Gamora and I will answer any questions you have about our different realities while Natasha and Tony go on this mission. Is that all your criteria?”

“Nope,” Anthony answers, reaching into his briefcase on the table. He pulls out a casual jacket and dress pants and tosses them at Tony. “Nanotech, new suit. It’ll help you with the mission. And the third condition, Steve stays here, confined to the Council, until the mission is complete and all research questions have been answered.”

Immediately, Natasha, Tony, and Gamora step forward defensively in front of Steve.

“You’re interning him?” Gamora asks incredulously. “I thought humans were supposed to be peaceful.”

“That’s not something we’re agreeing to,” Natasha adds, glaring at Anthony. She hadn’t particularly liked when Tony had confined Wanda to the compound, but it had been in her home that she knew with someone she trusted, not a government building filled with people who now viewed Steve as an old man whose identity was based on breaking the law.

“Internment is peaceful,” one of the Council members says from a hologram. “He will be fed and looked after until the first two conditions are met. How long he stays here really depends on you all.”

Steve sighs. “Guys, it’s okay. I can last here. They’re right. The internment center here isn’t what you’re picturing. I’ll have my own room, bathroom, three meals a day, outdoor privileges—”

“You get all that at your own house, too,” Natasha reminds him. She looks up at the Council members. “We’ll agree to the first two conditions, but not the third. We’ll do what you want; you’re just going to have to trust us.”

“Trust you?” another Council member scoffs. “You may have gone straight in your world, Ms. Romanoff, but in ours, the Black Widow is one of the top assassins in the world. We’ve been trying to eradicate her for quite some time now. We don’t even know her real name; the underground organizations that are anti-SHIELD and anti-Ultron have much more information than we could ever conceptualize.”

“Natalia Romanova,” Natasha replies evenly, not letting her gaze waver. She cocks her head. “You can trust _me_. Natasha Romanoff.”

Steve rests his hand gingerly on her shoulder to whisper in her ear. “Nat, I once watched these guys debate for three hours if the SHIELD logo should have straight or curved wings on the bird, and in the end, they just made two logos. Trust _me_ when I say I’ll be treated fine. And if I’m not…” He glances down to his hand that’s peeking out of his pocket, and Natasha follows his gaze. In his hand is his Pym particle, shining red and secretive. “I’ll see you back home.”

“See you in a minute,” Natasha whispers back. She nods to the Council, speaking up. “Fine. We agree to your conditions.”

“Great!” Anthony says, clapping his hands together. “Well, no time to waste. Gamora, Thor, if you could follow me, I’ll drive us over to the labs. I’ll call Selvig and some others…Thor, you know Selvig, right?” Without checking to see if they’re following, Anthony waves at the holograms and they disappear. The other Council members who had been there in person exit the room after.

Gamora nods at Natasha. “Good luck. Do you still have your comm unit?”

Natasha pats her unit, securely tucked in her back waistband. “Got it. If for some reason we’re not responding, don’t let us hold you back from finding your family. Steve has a particle that can help transport him back to our real time, and Tony and I will figure something out.”

“Oh, we will?” Tony asks jokingly.

Natasha turns to Loki. It’s difficult to glare at what looks like a happy Thor, a Thor who hasn’t experienced the death of his mother, father, and entire home planet, but she manages. “Look after each other. Don’t play any tricks. If you mess this up for us, I’ll make you beg for death.” She remembers Clint and Laura and their kids, and she means every word that she speaks.

Loki merely chuckles and nods. “What emotion, Agent Romanoff! I take it to heart. Don’t worry, it is not in my best interest to reveal who I really am here.” He and Gamora begin to exit the room before Anthony gets too far ahead of them. “Remember, there are many rocks in the road, but it will still lead to coming back home.”

When the door shuts behind them, it’s just Natasha, Tony, and Steve left. She’s surprised at the emotion that makes her unable to speak for a minute. She remembers countless banter between the three of them on and off missions and knows that the thrill of cracking jokes in the middle of a life or death situation is close to being over. Steve isn’t going on missions anymore, and Natasha knows once they get back to their true home, Tony isn’t going to ever leave Pepper or Morgan again.

“Well, I should head over before a droid comes to get me,” Steve says. He hugs Natasha tightly and shakes Tony’s head firmly. “Good luck with whatever they give you. I know you guys can do it. If you’re not back in two weeks from today, I’m going to use my last Pym particle and get back; Bruce, Sam, and Bucky are waiting to pull me back there. If you somehow get particles, because no one’s pulling you back—”

“Hey, I know how quantum physics works,” Tony says, giving him a smile. “We’ll figure it out. Two weeks, we’re not back, you go. And don’t tell anyone we’re here, either.”

“Don’t want to get their hopes up or risk anyone coming here after us,” Natasha adds.

“I was just thinking that my surprise presence would literally be the greatest gift any of our friends have ever gotten, but that too.”

Steve wishes them luck again before exiting the room. A moment later, the door opens again, and Coulson walks in.

Natasha’s breath catches in her throat. In her reality, Coulson had been revived and was leading a new secret team, but because that was a secret, she rarely got to see him. The last time she had seen him was Nate Barton’s baby shower.

“I guess Loki didn’t kill him here,” Tony mutters to Natasha. She internally sighs; that’s another secret she’s going to have to explain to him later.

“Hello, Mr. Stark. Ms. Romanoff,” Coulson says, but it’s different than what Natasha is used to. The Coulson she knew had always been affectionate toward her, someone she trusted, but this Coulson was cold and indifferent. “Here are your mission debrief files. Transportation is waiting for you outside. Because you aren’t active-duty SHIELD, or even from this planet, we unfortunately cannot use our resources to provide any backup or extraction should you need it. The UN and International Ultron Pact would have a fit.”

“We understand,” Natasha says dryly.

“I’ve never been on a secret-spy mission before like this,” Tony mentions, grabbing one of the files and holding it up. “But this seems particularly…light. Shouldn’t there be more?”

“That’s all the information we have on the mark,” Coulson says, giving him a tight smile. “And the mission is clear: eliminate the target.”

“And who is that, exactly? I don’t like being handed things. I don’t want to open this.”

“It’s me,” Natasha says shakily, staring at the paper of her file. In large letters, at the top of the page, reads: “TARGET: BLACK WIDOW.”

~

“And what would you like for Christmas, Natalia?”

Eighteen-year-old Natasha grins at the Winter Soldier. She’s proven to be the best of the Red Room, and because of this, Madame B agreed to let one of the Hydra super-soldiers train her to enhance her abilities.

“Are you getting me something, Zima?” she asks coyly, using the Russian word for ‘winter.’ His superiors didn’t give him a name, only call him Soldier, but Natalia found that inhumane. At least Madame B called all her girls different things to give them some semblance of an identity.

In a split second, Zima swings his prosthetic arm toward Natasha’s face. But she’s prepared. When they started training together nearly a year ago, Zima had used this trick on her; distract her with an emotional topic and then attack. She’d fallen for it, the first time. She won’t fall for it again.

Natasha rolls out of the way, dodging, and flips to her feet. She uses the snow on the ground to slide down between Zima’s legs and trip him. When he falls to the ground, she runs at him, wrapping her thighs around his neck and squeezes them tight, attempting to cut off his air supply. He grabs her shoulders and easily throws her to the ground, the snow softening her fall. He’s about to offer her a hand up, this short training session over, when Natasha grabs a snowball she’d made earlier and launches it up at his face, temporarily blinding him. She takes advantage of this to double-kick him in the stomach, and when he doubles over, she uses her legs to flip him to the ground. She kneels on his chest, making a gun with her hands, and pretends to shoot him.

“That was a cute trick,” he says, gently pushing her off. They both sit in the snow, side by side, breathing hard. “But you’re not playing in the snow with most of your marks. That would never happen.”

“I know,” Natasha huffs.

She takes her finger and writes her name in the snow. _наталья_.

Zima silently uses his finger to trace what Natasha calls him under her name. _зима_.

“I do wish I could get a Christmas present,” Natasha admits quietly. “I had a mark last Christmas who had gotten his children so many toys and treats there was barely any room for me to hide his body anywhere in the house.”

“You do not need presents, Natalia,” Zima assures her, though from his tone it’s clear he thinks she’s being silly. “You have your sisters and the motherland.”

“And you, Zima,” Natasha says, cheekily smiling, but she means it. He’s the first friend she’s ever had who hasn’t been also been a competitor, and she trusts him with her life. He’s the only person she’s ever met who she can say that about.

Zima wraps an arm around her shoulders. Natasha relishes the warmth. It’s snowing and the temperature is below freezing, but outside is the only place they have privacy. This makes some of the other girls tease Natasha that she and the Winter Soldier are lovers, but that’s not true. Natasha loves him, and she’s sure he loves her, but she doesn’t want to marry him.

There are different types of love, she has learned. There’s the love that she tells Madame B she has for the Red Room; the love she sees in her target’s eyes when he thinks she is going to kiss him before she actually kills him; the love her sisters show on their faces when Madame B lets them have extra dessert; the love she has for Yelena, the second best, even though they’ve tried to kill each other on multiple occasions; the love she has for Zima, for Winter, even though she doesn’t know his birth name and she isn’t sure he knows it either and they have to sneak away to dangerous conditions to have a single conversation alone.

Her love for Zima is her personal favorite.

This love isn’t dangerous, she has reasoned with herself, because if Madame B made her choose between the Red Room and Zima, she would choose the Red Room. She knows that he would choose Hydra and his superiors over her. It doesn’t bother her. It might bother her more if he would choose her over Hydra, because then that means he’s not the best, and then he shouldn’t be training her.

“I don’t know if I would consider myself a gift,” he says, a playful tone to his voice. “I didn’t get you anything for Christmas.”

“I didn’t get you anything, either,” Natasha points out.

“But you would, if Madame B wouldn’t punish you for it. I didn’t even think about getting you a gift. Why would I? Who are you, even? What’s your name again?” Zima asks, jokingly nudging her.

Natasha giggles as they roll around in the snow. “Who are _you_? I only associate with people who actually know what all the positions are of ballet.”

“Oh! She thinks she’s funny, this one!” Zima exclaims, tugging on a lock of red hair. “I go back to the cryo tomorrow and this is how she says goodbye.”

Natasha laughs, but the mirth behind the action is gone. Whenever Zima is frozen, it always takes much of her effort to coax him back to where they were in their friendship, to get him to actually speak and act like the man she knows. Whenever they’re training right after he ends a stasis stay, he forgets it’s a training session and becomes dangerously close to killing her, forgetting what they’re doing, forgetting who she is for real.

“I’ll see you in a few weeks,” she whispers as she hugs him tightly. “I’ll have a proper present for you. My next mission is to America.” She’s never told Zima, but she guesses that he was originally from there. His accent is great, almost impeccable, and he can speak nearly as many languages as she can, but there’s a certain way he pronounces certain words that makes her certain he isn’t from her Russia.

“I’ll have a present for you, too, Natalia,” he replies, his voice muffled by her hair covering his mouth. Natasha tries not to frown at his words; they both know he won’t have a present for her because he won’t remember to get her one.

“You don’t have to get me anything, Zima,” she assures him. “All I ask is that you could at least recognize me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, just to be clear, the first parts of this chapter are set in the alternate reality. The last part is a flashback of Natasha's from her true reality. :) Thank you for reading!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She wants to assure Tony that she can still think, and that everything is going to be okay, but she isn’t sure that everything actually will be. She attempts to give Tony a reassuring expression; he’s one of the smartest people she’s ever met. He can figure something out.
> 
> If he can’t…well, at least she was given a second shot.

“Okay, the pulse barrage and repulsor rays in this baby are locked and loaded,” Tony announces, finishing his examination of Anthony’s Iron Man suit he had lent him. “The beams fire in the top petawatt region, so if you need me to use them, I’ll have to do it from outs—”

“Tony,” Natasha interrupts gently, her eyes closed. “You don’t have to worry about it. Just make sure you’ve got enough power to fly back to New York.”

Coulson had been kind enough to provide them with a plane ride to Manila, but not much else. They had to locate Natalia the Black Widow on their own, kill her themselves, and get back to New York without being seen, all in less than two weeks.

Natasha knows both she and Tony have done more in less time. Unfortunately, she knows Natalia has, also.

“Sorry, Nat, you’re speaking to the man who _literally_ died to save the world,” Tony chirps good-naturedly, stretching his arms. “Your little self-sacrificing bit here isn’t going to work. I’m helping you on this. I’m not leaving you.”

“Tony, she’s one of the world’s most dangerous operatives,” Natasha deadpans. “She’s killed more people than you’ve met. She’s ruthless; she’s the Black Widow.”

“And I’m Iron Man,” Tony responds, shrugging. “We’ve all got cute nicknames. Look, I’ll have the suit ready to go in two seconds if I need it. You’ve seen the nanotech.”

“You’re going to need it,” Natasha warns him. She knows there’s no arguing with Tony once he’s made up his mind about something. “And you better make it faster than two seconds. She could kill you in half that time if she wants to.”

Natasha takes a deep breath. It’s strange, talking about her alternate self. She’d tried for so long to kill the monster inside of her who would kill anyone without a second thought, and now she has to kill the actual monster. She isn’t sure what to expect. She had been nearly unmatched by everyone when she was just a teenager; this Natalia, who has been operating for much longer and forced to hide even more due to Ultron, would most likely be on an entirely different level.

“Let’s try this thing out then,” Tony sighs. He slips on the jacket and tugs on one of the buttons. Immediately, the material begins stretching, expanding until the Iron Man armor completely covers Tony’s body, the only visible part of him being his face.

“Hello, sir. I hope this suit accommodates you accordingly,” the AI voice says from inside. Natasha and Tony both look at each other in surprise. The voice is familiar, friendly, and distinctly British and male.

“Jarvis?” Tony whispers, his eyes shining.

“Yes, sir?” the voice replies back amicably. “Mr. Stark informed me you would be utilizing this suit for the duration of this mission. Is there anything you need at the moment?”

Tony manages to emit a shocked, breathy laugh, before blinking and shaking his head slightly. “Uh, no, no. It’s just…good to hear your voice. You get along with Ultron, I’m guessing?”

“We collaborate at the discretion of Mr. Stark occasionally. Captain Rogers was adamant when Ultron was first being created and implemented that he stay away from my systems and consciousness. For why, I know not.”

Natasha ducks her head so Tony can’t see her smile. She’d felt an indescribable barrier between herself and Steve at his house; she isn’t sure if it’s due to the fact that he’s now an old man or that he got to come back from the Quantum Realm and she didn’t or that he voluntarily left their reality, but she knows it was there. She knows Steve would be different after spending a lifetime in a different reality and having some control over its events, but also knowing that he stopped the world’s most powerful peace-keeping initiative to protect Jarvis lets her know he maybe didn’t change as much as she thought he did.

Natasha studies the files again that SHIELD provided them on the Black Widow. Natalia Romanova had last been spotted by an undercover SHIELD agent in the Philippines, near the Russian Embassy in Manila. Their closest guess as to why she is there is to tamper with the annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.

“Tony, can you get me a list of all the people that will be at the APEC meeting tomorrow?” Natasha asks.

Tony taps on the Iron Man suit, and it begins breaking down until he’s back to wearing his normal clothes. “Can I—I’m offended you even have to ask, Romanoff. It’ll just take me a minute.”

While he fiddles with a tablet he had brought along, Natasha peeks out the window of their small hotel room. It’s late, nearly midnight, yet the streets below are still crowded with civilians milling around. Natasha finds this advantageous for them to keep their heads down and blend in.

It could also be disadvantageous for innocent deaths. The Black Widow doesn’t care who she kills.

“Okay, I hacked into the embassy system. Looking for anyone specifically?” Tony asks a minute later.

Natasha nods. “Highlight anyone who hasn’t been there previously. There’s a reason she chose this year’s meeting. Cross that list with those coming from countries who have any upcoming deals with Russia or disputes, private or public.”

“Alright, this will just take a second,” Tony tells her, typing. He looks up at her. “What’s the game plan?”

“We’ll sneak into the embassy early before any representatives arrive, around four or five in the morning,” Natasha decides after pondering. “I’ll find some position to act as so no one pays me much attention. You stay outside, so you can see the heat signatures, and only enter the building if necessary. There might be a bomb. I can’t say for sure until I figure out her game plan.”

Tony nods cautiously. “Okay. But…chances are there won’t be one, right? I mean, if she blows up the building, she dies too. I don’t see why she would take on a mission she knows she’s going to die on.”

Natasha holds his gaze, not showing any emotion.

_You are made of marble._

Tony clears his throat. “Oh. Well, never mind, then. Okay. So we just have to look out for you…well, you, and any potential bombs and the like. That’s not too bad. She’s not going to have anyone with her?”

Natasha remembers long brown hair, a metal arm, and freezing.

She gives Tony a calculated smile. “No, I don’t think she is.”

~

Tony yawns for the tenth time in half an hour, stretching his arms. “You know, I think this is the earliest I’ve ever been up on this side of the world. Pep and I came to the Philippines for our honeymoon, you know, gorgeous place on Boracay—”

“You literally called us while you were there to brag,” Natasha cuts in. She continues walking at a brisk pace, keeping her footsteps quiet. “You have the stuff?”

Tony pats his pocket affirmatively. “Ipepac extract, mixed with methylparaben and sugar,” he tells her. “Just a small dose and the sweet little assistant from Ottawa will be occupied the rest of the morning throwing up.”

“Lovely,” Natasha mutters. The plan is for Tony to slip the Canadian Prime Minister’s assistant just enough of the extract to make her go back to the hotel, which will provide an opening for Natasha to act as her replacement and be granted access without any suspicion directed toward her.

Tony tugs on Natasha’s light brunette wig, accidentally pulling out a few follicles of the cheap hairpiece. “Oops, sorry. You know, I gotta say, the red is still my favorite.”

Natasha grins. Red is her favorite too, but no one except Clint knows that. It’s her natural hair color, something that makes her feel less like a weapon and more like a person.

It’s still early, so most of the world leaders haven’t arrived yet, but their assistants and the building staff have already. Natasha locates the Canadian Prime Minister’s assistant and silently signals to Tony, who’s dressed as a waiter, to make his move. He puts some of the Ipepac extract into a cup of water and walks over to the assistant, who graciously accepts it and takes a long swig.

A few minutes later, she’s scurrying down a hallway, presumably to find the nearest trash can.

Natasha nods to Tony, who turns to exit the building. The plan is for him to use the stealth mode in the Iron Man suit and stay outside to get an aerial view of the building and anyone entering or leaving, and provide Natasha with heat signatures on the interior of the building.

They’d deduced that a major difference at this year’s APEC meeting is that Wakanda joined the forum the previous year, and it would be the African country’s first appearance at a meeting. Because King T’Chaka still hadn’t opened Wakanda to the rest of the world, Wakanda was still obligated to participate in inter-governmental conferences by Ultron to ensure that other countries knew what was going on there at least.

When the Canadian Prime Minister arrives, Natasha swiftly explains that his original assistant became ill and that she is his replacement for the day. She asks if there’s anything she can get him before the forum begins, construing her words in a way that guarantee he’ll say yes.

“Um, I guess I could use a water. Thanks, dear,” he says, and Natasha smirks to herself.

She uses the task of retrieving a water bottle as an excuse to climb two flights of stairs to a secluded hallway. She taps on her comm unit, discreetly hidden behind her ear.

“Got anything for me, Stark?” she asks quietly.

“Just over two hundred people in the building as of right now,” Tony answers. “I’m not getting a pinpoint location for…what do we want to call her, exactly? It could get a little messy since you’re both the Black Widow, technically—”

“Natalia,” Natasha answers. “Let me know if you see anything. Stay sharp.”

“Roger that.”

Natasha sighs, leaning against the wall for a second.

Her rest is short-lived when she hears the click of someone’s footsteps nearing her. She tenses, gripping her gun in her hand. She’s in a restricted area of the building; no one should be here, including herself. It could just be a worker who saw her who’s come to tell her she’s not allowed up here.

Or it could be someone else.

“Привет, черная вдова.” _Hello, Black Widow._

Natasha internally groans. She hates being right sometimes.

“I thought only one could hold that title,” Natasha replies coolly in English, loosening her grip on the gun. She doesn’t want to appear as a threat just yet. “Are you not the Black Widow?”

Natasha turns to face the newcomer. Harsh years of spy training are the only reason she doesn’t flinch when she sees Natalia – it’s like looking into the worst distorted mirror she’s ever seen. Natalia looks just like her, yet every feature of hers is different in some way; her frame thinner, her posture stiffer, her mouth angrier, her eyes older. Her hair is dyed a dark shade of black, so deep it almost looks blue in the light. It hasn’t been red for a long time.

Natalia cocks her head. “Only one on Earth,” she agrees in English, a slight Russian accent audible. Natasha knows this is on purpose; Madame B made sure they perfected every possible accent before they were thirteen. “But you are not from this Earth, no?”

She doesn’t seem surprised at all to see Natasha. Natasha isn’t sure if that’s because someone with SHIELD leaked that she and Tony were here, or if Natalia’s training is so ingrain that she’s incapable of showing the slightest bit of emotion. Natasha isn’t sure which is worse.

“Who wants to know?” Natasha responds. “Don’t tell me Hydra’s still got moles in SHIELD. I once used the Bites on myself to help get them out.”

Natalia regards her curiously for a minute while applying bright red lipstick, as if to see if her question is serious. When she’s apparently convinced that it is, she chuckles. “Oh, my dear. You are quite mistaken. Hydra did not send me here. I do not go anywhere I do not wish to go.”

“That’s a lie and we both know it,” Natasha replies. Their conversation is quick, with barely any pause between the two women’s responses. Natasha feels like she’s performing a dance where she can only rely on muscle memory because she has no time to think about her next move. “I was sent plenty of places I didn’t want to go.”

“That is why we are different,” Natalia bites back, squaring her shoulders. “You are a subordinate. I am an equal.” She discretely flexes her muscles, but they have the same body; Natasha knows the signs of an impending attack. Natalia is about to begin fighting her.

“We’ll see about that,” Natasha says, and swings first.

Natasha and Natalia engage in a fight that Natalia could almost describe as balletic. There are no harsh, loud hits or tackles; just fast punches, agile leg swings around necks, and calculated pushes and kicks.

Natalia has managed to destroy Natasha’s comm unit and get her in a chokehold when Natasha balls her hand into a fist and punches backward, utilizing her Sovereign strength onto her doppelganger. Natalia rips off Natasha’s wig as she’s thrown backwards through the hole, leaving a gaping hole in it.

Natasha exhales heavily. She brushes her red hair out of her face and jogs over to the hole in the wall, expecting to see Natalia sprawled out in the room behind it, but she’s not there.

Natasha swears. She taps her comm unit, but it merely produces static. Natasha swears again. She climbs through the hole and into the empty conference room on the other side of the wall. She studies the room before noticing the air vent in the ceiling which is slightly loose. She hops up onto the table and uses her grappling hook to remove the vent cover before launching herself up into the vents.

A few brown strands of hair from the cheap wig Natasha had been wearing act as Natasha’s navigation guide. She follows the hair and the dust patterns to follow Natalia’s path until she hears her voice from a room below the vents.

Natasha presses her ear to the vent. Natalia is talking to…

Tony. Shit.

“You know, I have to hand it to you, I did not think you would’ve had the balls to use nitroglycerin,” he rambles. Through the vent, Natasha can see he’s wearing the Iron Man suit and fiddling with a bomb, trying to quickly dismantle it. “This thing could’ve gone off with barely any stimulus if I hadn’t found it.”

“That was the point,” Natalia growls from somewhere out of Natasha’s sight. Natasha hears the click of a gun and knows it’s aimed at Tony. “Stop right now or I put a bullet through your brain.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Tony quips. “You shoot me, and I won’t be able to tell you where the Winter Soldier is.”

Natasha freezes. She’d been about to kick in the vent and fall down into the room. Why the hell would Tony mention Barnes? She’d never told anyone except Clint that she and the Winter Soldier used to love each other. It had been in her file when she’d come to SHIELD that the Black Widow and Winter Soldier had been associates during the Cold War, but Natasha had made sure to wipe that information the week she’d started working for SHIELD.

Unless Tony hacked it, which he probably had. But why had he kept it a secret all these years that he knew Natasha had known Barnes before?

_Coulson, you know Stark trusts me about as far as he can throw me._

Natasha steadies her breathing. She can’t afford to lose her trust in Tony now. He probably has some explanation for it.

Natalia seems to feel the same way.

“What do you know about him?” she demands, her voice slightly wavering. Her Russian accent lilts her words slightly, hinting that she’s more affected by Tony’s words than she wants to be. “Why would you bring him up?”

“You won’t find out if you kill me,” Tony answers. Natasha can see that he’s done fiddling with the bomb, which means it’s disarmed, and now he’s just biding his time, most likely waiting for her.

“I haven’t seen the Soldier in nearly four years,” Natalia says lowly. “I do not know if he is dead or alive.”

“I find that interesting. You’re the best spy in the world, and you can’t even figure out if someone’s alive?”

Natasha hears a rustling, indicating that Natalia has put the gun down. Even when she was in the Red Room, Natasha never would have made that mistake. In this reality, whatever had happened between Natalia and Barnes, it was definitely salient.

Natasha takes advantage of Natalia’s mistake; there can only be one winner here. She kicks through the vent, landing in a crouch position on the floor, and charges at Natalia, who doesn’t look entirely surprised to see her. The two women wrestle around for a minute, and Natasha lands a couple of solid punches to Natalia’s abdomen, which are enough to leave her laying on the ground, groaning in pain.

Natasha grabs Natalia’s guns and fires two shots directly into her stomach, ensuring she won’t be getting up anytime soon. Beside them, Tony holds out his hand, ready to blast the doppelganger if need be.

“Were you here to kill King T’Chaka?” Natasha asks her. She doesn’t take pity on anyone, not even the dying. “You were going to blow up this whole building for one man?”

“Wakanda has been sending spies to assist in the hunt for Hydra,” Natalia spits, blood trickling out of her mouth. She doesn’t show weakness, even when dying. “A third world country that provides shepherds and textiles wastes the last of their vibranium to kill Hydra. The leader that decides that is no leader at all.”

Natasha smirks. So T’Chaka had figured out a way to still be involved with world politics while also keeping his country hidden. Natasha almost wishes she had gotten to know him better when he was still alive in her reality.

Blood is pouring out onto the carpeted floor from Natalia’s stomach, and the life is quickly draining from her eyes. Natasha kneels beside her. “ты умрешь даром,” she says matter-of-factly. _You are going to die for nothing._

“ничто не вечно,” Natalia replies. _Nothing lasts forever._

Natalia’s pale hand reaches up to cradle Natasha’s head. She leans forward and kisses Natasha’s lips softly before laying down on the carpet in her own puddle of blood. She closes her eyes, takes a shuddering breath, and doesn’t move again.

After a moment, the gold plate on the Iron Man helmet retracts so Natasha can see Tony’s face. “You know,” he says, “if it weren’t for the fact that that’s your literal evil doppelganger and you didn’t just kill her, that could’ve been hot for a minute.”

Natasha prepares a sarcastic reply, but she finds that she’s lost her voice. She opens her mouth to speak but nothing comes out. Her eyes meet Tony’s, slightly panicked, before her legs crumble beneath her, and she falls to the ground, unable to move.

Tony immediately rushes forward, kneeling beside her. “Nat? Nat! What’s wrong? JARVIS, give me her vitals, now!”

“It appears Ms. Romanoff is suffering from tetrodotoxin poisoning,” JARVIS supplies. “The toxin is commonly found in the organs of certain fish species. It causes nerve interference between the brain and body, and paralysis is a common side effect. If untreated, within six hours, the lungs will be unable to expand or retract, and death is imminent.”

“Where the hell did she get it from?” Tony shouts, panicking. He checks Natasha’s pulse; it’s much slower than normal. “We ate the same things!”

“There appears to be a high level of tetrodotoxin located in the lipstick tube in Ms. Romanova’s pocket,” JARVIS answers. “There is no known antidote for tetrodotoxin poisoning. Had Ms. Romanova not been shot, she would have died within the next couple of hours as it appears she had been exposed to the neurotoxin as well.”

Natasha wants to respond, but her limbs feel too heavy. She wants to assure Tony that she can still think, and that everything is going to be okay, but she isn’t sure that everything actually will be. She attempts to give Tony a reassuring expression; he’s one of the smartest people she’s ever met. He can figure something out.

If he can’t…well, at least she was given a second shot.

She lets her eyelids flutter closed.

~

“You know, normally I’d feel bad about you cooking for me, but after that workout, you definitely owe us,” Rhodey sighs, taking a bite of the salmon Steve had prepared. “They didn’t even have us go this hard for BMT.”

“My BMT definitely wasn’t this intense,” Sam agrees, shaking his head. He sips his water. “All that workout and you can’t even get me any ice cubes, Cap? What kind of program are you running here?”

“Steve already almost burned the compound down using the oven. I’d hate to see him try and use the ice dispenser,” Natasha quips, entering the kitchen. She stretches her arms before sitting next to Rhodey at the table.

She and Steve have been working with him, Sam, Wanda, and Vision for almost a month now after battling Ultron in Sokovia. She wishes she could say it’s going well whenever Clint or Tony call to check in on them, but she can’t. Vision is physically the most capable of their newest members, but still has trouble recognizing sarcasm and common slang words, which makes it difficult to communicate and imagine basic training scenarios with him. Wanda still has trust issues – whether with the team or herself, Natasha still is figuring out, but whichever it is, it’s making the witch clearly hold back in her abilities. Rhodey is gone more often than not for Air Force business, so when he is there, he’s never up to speed on specific runs they’ve been practicing. Sam sometimes seems like he’s the only one who actually wants to be there in terms of enthusiasm, but when it comes to more dangerous practices or missions, he’s the first one to volunteer Vision or Wanda to make the first move.

“Keep complaining about my cooking and you guys can make your own dinner tomorrow,” Steve says good-naturedly, carrying another dish in. “Some potatoes, if you guys want it.”

Wanda puts a few of the miniature potatoes on her plate and takes a bite. Immediately, she begins coughing, covering her mouth with a napkin. Vision pats her on the back as the coughing subsides.

“That bad?” Steve asks, grimacing.

“It…is not bad. I just lost my breath for a moment,” Wanda assures him, but lying isn’t one of her strong suits.

Natasha gives Steve a sympathetic smile. He chuckles back at her and holds up his cell phone. “Okay, okay, I’m a horrible cook, I know. I would like to point out that this would’ve been considered fine dining back in the ’20’s. Who wants pizza?”

“Make it stuffed crust!” Sam calls, standing and gathering everyone’s plates. “I’m guessing I can go ahead and just throw all this in the garbage disposal? I think you’re the only one who’d eat it, Cap.” He walks across the large kitchen to begin washing the dishes.

“Go ahead,” Steve sighs, but there’s a smile pulling at his lips. He stands and walks out of the kitchen to place an order for pizza delivery.

“Well, if we have to wait for the pizza, I’m going to take a quick shower,” Rhodey informs them. He salutes and jogs out of the kitchen.

Steve’s voice calls out from the living room. “Guys, they’re asking for a card number. I don’t have a card. Can anyone call Tony?”

“You do have a card, Captain,” Vision calls back. He floats up and through the kitchen wall, disappearing to go help Steve.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that,” Natasha muses.

Wanda gives her a reticent smile. Natasha knows the young witch is afraid that she hates her for messing with her mind, no matter how many times Natasha has assured her it’s in the past.

“I told him he should try and only use doors from now on,” Wanda says. “I did not think it was possible, given his nature, but he just seems out of his element sometimes and forgets.”

“He’s not the only one,” Natasha responds pointedly.

Wanda looks down at her lap, her long hair hiding her face. “I do not feel out of my element. I know I am. I was not made to be part of a team like this.”

“No one is,” Natasha tells her, a soft smile on her face. “Clint was supposed to kill me on a mission. We were enemies. But instead he brought me in, and…” Natasha shrugs her shoulders, motioning to the air. “Now I help Captain America lead his team. Who would’ve guessed?”

Wanda shakes her head, looking at Natasha with wide eyes. “You must give yourself more credit, Natasha. This team is yours as much as his, if not more. He cares about keeping us safe. You care about keeping us together.”

_If I move on, who does this?_

“Are those not the same thing?” Natasha asks, curious about Wanda’s opinion. She has her own thoughts about it, of course, but part of her training with Wanda has been to get her to open up more.

“They should be,” Wanda says after some thought. “But look at me and Pietro. We were not safe with Strucker, but we were together. Now I am safe, but we are not together.” She pauses for a moment after seeing Natasha’s pained expression and leans forward to grasp Natasha’s wrist. “ _Bunătate_ , no, Natasha, that’s not what I meant. That came out wrong. You are more confident in us than Steve is. You believe we will be safe if we are together. He believes we will be safe only under certain circumstances. But you are both great leaders and important members of the Avengers. I am lucky to have you to learn from.”

Natasha rests her hand on top of Wanda’s. “Thank you.” She’s surprised that she’s touched by a conversation with someone she’s known for just over a month. She decides to lighten the serious mood. “So, do I need to duke it out with Steve for supreme leadership of the Avengers?”

Wanda laughs. “No,” she sighs, and then her expression sobers. “You need to—”

~

“—wake up. Come on, Nat, _wake up_.”

Natasha’s eyes snap open. She does a quick self-assessment of herself without moving. She has a slight headache, but she doesn’t seem to have any serious head or brain injury. Her muscles all feel light, like the time she and Yelena snuck out when Madame B was sick to smoke marijuana for the first time. In other words, she feels a hell of a lot better than she did when she fell to the ground next to Natalia.

Natasha tries to sit up. Tony rushes forward and rests his hand on her back, helping her into an upright position. “Oh, thank God. How are you feeling? Do you remember what happened?”

“I killed her,” Natasha says. She has cottonmouth, but she’s dealt with worse before. She looks around; they’re back in their hotel room. “How did you get us out of the embassy? What did you do with the body? W—”

“Slow down, Bugs Bunny, I can barely understand you,” Tony says. He grabs a glass of water off the bedside table and lets her take a small sip before he answers. “No one saw us, so you can relax. And for how we got here…” He gestures behind him.

Natasha follows his movement. Loki emerges from the bathroom, wearing a dark gray hooded sweatshirt. He stops in his tracks when he notices she’s staring at him, looking surprised, but covers it up with a grin. “Agent Romanoff. How nice of you to join the land of the living. I’ll take my payment for the transport of this reality’s Natasha properly at your earliest convenience.”

“You…called him?” Natasha asks Tony, too surprised to be able to imagine a witty comeback at the moment. She didn't even get a chance to ask Tony how he knew to mention the Winter Soldier to Natalia, but now there's more pressing issues.

“I was going to call Steve, but he’s, you know, locked up at the moment. Then I called Gamora, and—”

“She doesn’t have the ability to be in two places at once,” Loki interjects, sitting opposite them on the other bed. “But alas, I do. As far as the other Stark and SHIELD are concerned, Thor is still answering mind-numbingly boring questions with Gamora, and I came to your rescue.”

“I thought your illusions weren’t tangible,” Natasha tells him.

Loki smirks. “I had many years without anyone nagging me to practice my magic. The Sovereign couldn’t monitor what they didn’t know was happening.”

Reassured that Natasha is alright, Tony squeezes her shoulder affectionately before standing and grabbing his tablet. “Okay, so Natalia’s body was successfully shipped to Wakanda. Apparently T’Chaka wanted to see the woman who tried to have him murdered, and SHIELD approved. So, we’ll be good to go back, and Steve can get out of j—”

“Wait,” Natasha croaks. Her mind is spinning. “How long was I out for? The APEC meeting is over already? The body was shipped already?”

Tony and Loki share a look, and if Natasha weren’t feeling like shit, she would shudder. Seeing Tony and the god of mischief share anything was something she never wanted to see and never thought she would.

“Nat, you were out for over twelve hours. It’s the next day already; you killed Natalia yesterday,” Tony answers quietly. “On top of you being touch and go for about three hours. I guess the Sovereign DNA can make you stronger and faster but can’t protect against neurotoxins.”

“The Sovereign aren’t affected by toxins the way humans are. They don’t have to account for that,” Loki says defensively.

“Whatever,” Tony mutters. He points to Natasha. “I know you’ve got to be hungry. What are you craving? I’ll run out and get something really quick.”

Natasha tells him to get two of whatever he’s having. She honestly isn’t that hungry; knowing that she killed her alternate self and had been poisoned afterward wasn’t exactly appetite-inducing.

Loki is eyeing her curiously when Tony leaves. Natasha ignores him and slowly gets out of bed, stretching her muscles as much as she can. She finishes the water in the glass Tony had given her and turns around to find Loki’s gaze still focused on her.

“Can I help you?” she asks. “You can go on and materialize back to New York or however you do this thing. We’ll figure out a way to get back.”

“I can be of service,” Loki offers. “You’re not exactly in the best condition right now. It’s costing me no extra strength to be here and also in New York with Gamora.”

Natasha frowns at him. Since when is he concerned about her well-being? “Faking an identity to book a flight is probably one of the easiest things I’ll have done in a long time. Trust me. It’ll be fun.” She and Clint used to make up the most ridiculous names and occupations for each other whenever they had to go undercover and book flights.

Loki runs a hand through his hair, looking stressed. “Natasha,” he grits out. That makes her freeze; he rarely calls her by her real first name. “You almost _died_. I saw your life aura _leaving your body_ multiple times. Even if you have Sovereign DNA in you now, you still need to rest. Killing your alternate self after a fight and then being poisoned would take its toll on anyone, and continuing to act out a mission would just be stupid.”

Natasha sits back down on the bed, facing him. She’s good at reading people. All her years of experience indicate that Loki is genuinely concerned about her well-being, but she knows that can’t be correct. This is the same Loki who tried to destroy New York and then hid out on an alien planet for over a decade, all while taking advantage of and deceiving them for his own personal gain. There was no way he would actually care about how she’s doing.

A small voice in the back of her head tells her that he _did_ use his powers to help Tony save her life. She makes a mental note to ask him later how he eradicated the poison from her system. But she figures the reason he helped save her life is that he doesn’t want her to expose him to SHIELD and Ultron and have them imprison him.

Natasha thinks back to some of the lessons Madame B taught her. She has a feeling she’ll be doing a lot of that soon since she hasn’t had time to actually process what talking to Natalia was like.

“Sometimes,” she tells Loki, “you have to continue and kill parts of yourself if you want other parts to live.”

Loki’s about to respond when he freezes. He closes his eyes for a minute before opening them and jumping up, pulling her to her feet quickly. Natasha’s head spins a bit, but she recovers quickly, grabbing her bag and shoving on her shoes without questioning what’s happening. She’s been in enough life-or-death situations to know that you always ask questions later.

Loki pulls his hood tight over his head and grabs Tony’s things while pushing her out the door. If they were friends, Natasha would actually compliment his ability to multitask; he could give Laura Barton on weekday mornings a run for her money.

They both begin running, and Loki speaks into his comm unit. “Stark, can you hear me? Meet us at the Ninoy Aquino Airport… _yes_ , now! I’ll explain when we’re there!”

Natasha hails a cab once they reach the street. She knows where the airport is; it’s about six miles from the Russian embassy, which means it’s even less from the hotel. Normally she’d suggest just running since traffic in Manila rivals that of Times Square, but she can barely feel her legs still.

Once they’re in the backseat of a cab on the route to the airport, Natasha turns to Loki. “No bullshitting me right now. Seriously. What the hell just happened?”

Loki peers over at her from underneath his hood, which amazingly hasn’t budged from his head. Natasha had struggled to keep the baseball cap she’d swiped from a stand on the street on her head to cover her hair.

“I can see what my real form is doing at the moment,” Loki answers quietly.

“That must be a sensory overload,” Natasha observes.

“I am accustomed to it,” Loki admits. “But what I saw…something entered Earth’s atmosphere above New York. As the custom goes, one of Stark’s Iron Legion droids is going to observe it.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Natasha replies, but her gut is telling her that that’s not it, that something bad is happening. She just can’t seem to catch a damn break.

“Except I recognize the ship. It’s from Sovereign,” Loki finishes.

Oh. Shit.

Natasha stares at him, a naïve part of her hoping that it will be Al-Bedo unexpectedly having followed them, or some random civilian who got lost. But Loki’s worried expression tells her it can’t be that easy, because why would it be?

“We need to get back and prepare,” Loki says gravely. “I fear Warlock has come to Earth in search of us, and he brought Magus and the Goddess with him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, APEC is a real thing, and there are annual big meetings between all the countries involved – I’m just not sure exactly how the meetings are run obviously, so I took some liberties and made that part up myself :) The updates haven’t been as frequent as I would like, but since school has ended I’m back to working 40 hours a week for the summer so I’ve been more tired than usual. I think I can still finish before FFH comes out in theaters though, so fingers crossed!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gamora crosses her arms. “What happened to sticking together? Whatever you’re planning, you have to be completely sure it’ll work. These aren’t the human enemies you were facing on Earth. These guys are Sovereign.”
> 
> Natasha cocks her head, pressing the button to start closing the pod around herself. She smirks. “So am I.”

Natasha sometimes misses the time before she was seen as a leader, before she was seen as someone who could take accountability for the actions of others. She misses the anonymity of being able to do her job without public criticism and the knowledge that only a few people in the world had an opinion about her.

Government meetings are just so goddamn _boring._

“We ratified the 29th Amendment in 2014 _specifically_ to prevent this catastrophe,” Secretary Ross says, rubbing his temple. “We’ve got people still dying of hunger and poverty and you want us to use millions of dollars to fight…what was the name again?”

“Adam Warlock,” Loki as Thor says, his tone grave. “Believe me, Mr. Secretary, you—”

“And why _should_ we believe you, Thor?” the hologram of Nick Fury interrupts, cocking his head. “In our reality, Thor has come to Earth three times. The first, he nearly decimated a small town in New Mexico. The second, he was chasing down his runaway brother who very nearly decimated the most populated cities in the United States. The third, he stopped by for a visit to Dr. Stephen Strange, who still hasn’t told us what exactly happened in the meeting. Thor hasn’t exactly given us much reason to trust or believe in him.”

“Your reality’s Thor has not lost nearly half of what I have,” Thor replies steadily. Natasha wonders if Loki means Thor’s loss or his own. “My word is good, I assure you. The threat of Adam Warlock is not to be taken lightly.”

Anthony Stark gestures to the screen in front of him. “It’s not taken lightly. In fact, it’s being taken rather heavily. That ship of theirs is pressing in on Ultron’s planetary defense barrier harder than anything we’ve ever seen before or could’ve even predicted. So, like it or not, King Midas and his crew are coming to us, and soon.”

Natasha shares a look with her Tony. She knows he’s feeling the same way as her: worried and guilty. If they hadn’t have come to Earth, Adam wouldn’t be there.

She clears her throat, attracting the attention of everyone in the large conference room, both real people and holograms alike.

“Adam wants us,” she says matter-of-factly, gesturing to herself, Tony, Gamora, and Thor. “We killed the Black Widow for you. Let us take one of your ships, or repair ours, and we’ll go back into space to deal with him. This isn’t your fight.”

“SHIELD is prepared to deal with threats such as this one,” Fury counters, his hologram turning to glare at her. Natasha finds that she oddly missed that expression. “If we can defeat this guy, I say we do it. Show him, and the rest of the universe, that Earth is not a place they want to fuck with.”

_Trouble, Miss Romanoff. No matter who wins or loses, trouble still comes around._

Natasha gives him a polite smirk. “No, sir, it’s not.”

“I disagree, Director,” Ross says, shaking his head. “I cannot, on good conscience, send our troops into this battle.”

The elderly Steve nods his head slowly. “I agree with Ross. We shouldn’t have Adam try and destroy this world you’ve worked hard to protect.”

Tony raises his eyebrows in surprise. “Rogers, agreeing with Ross. Never thought I’d live to see the day.”

“Technically, you didn’t,” Natasha mutters to him, and he smirks back at her.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” Fury says, “but if you don’t think we should fight him on this world, where do you suggest we take him?”

“Our world,” Steve answers firmly. “I had a lot of time to think during my days when you locked me up. When I left my world to return the Stones, everyone was grieving the loss of both Natasha Romanoff and Tony Stark. They’ll be more than thrilled to have them back, and more than willing to fight the bastard who’s hunting them down.”

Gamora manages to catch Natasha’s eye. She nods once, glancing down at her own hand, and Natasha follows her gaze to see that the green-skinned woman is holding four Pym particles in her hand. Natasha makes a mental note to ask her what exactly happened in the meeting she had been in while Natasha and Tony had gone to Manila.

“Hold on,” Anthony says, looking at his counterpart in Tony. “You guys still don’t know how you got here, exactly. How do you know you can get back? Tampering with the Planck Scale—”

“We don’t know,” Tony interrupts, shrugging. He tiredly smiles. “That’s the hero gig. Part of the journey is the end.”

Anthony opens his mouth to reply, but before he can speak, the rest of the people in the room are already agreeing with Steve’s suggestion, all in favor of moving a fight that’s not theirs elsewhere. A part of Natasha wants to feel hurt, even betrayed after she killed the Black Widow in this reality, that they would brush them off so easily. But she gets it; she doesn’t think she would want to risk thousands of innocent lives in a fight they don’t have to be a part of.

_What, you think I want to do this?_

Immediately, plans are being enacted to figure out how to get Adam’s spaceship to follow Natasha, Steve, Tony, Gamora, and Thor back to their reality. Amidst the chaos, Natasha grips Tony’s hand tightly with her own. They exit the building holding hands, and when she looks up, Natasha can almost make out Adam’s spaceship, high in the sky, being held off by Ultron’s security system.

“I hope everyone’s ready,” Natasha tells Tony, grinning. “We’re bringing the party to them.”

Tony shakes his head and gazes at the ship in the sky. “I don’t see how that’s a party.”

~

“Did I miss anything?” Bruce whispers, sliding clumsily into the seat beside Natasha. “I didn’t have ID on me. Security wouldn’t let me in. I had to get Pepper’s weird uncle to vouch for me.”

Natasha shrugs. “Rhodey told that story he always tells in his best man speech, but that’s about it.”

“The ‘boom, you looking for this’ one?” Bruce asks.

“That would be it.”

“I’m so upset I missed it.”

Natasha smirks at him, using the expression as an excuse to study him closer. They’re at Tony and Pepper’s wedding reception, which would normally be a happy occasion, but Natasha wouldn’t guess that if she was basing it off Bruce’s appearance. His tuxedo is unkempt, almost messy, there are dark circles under his eyes, and his knee is uncontrollably bouncing.

Natasha gives Bruce a subtle head nod. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah, I’m all good,” Bruce says, looking anything but. “I’ve just been working in the lab a lot. I’m tired. Where’s Steve?” 

“You just missed him. Someone from one of his support groups called him up for something and he had to go,” Natasha answers. She has an idea of what Bruce is working on in the lab, but she doesn’t want to pry.

Plus, she knows she’s probably going to have to help the already intoxicated Tony out after the reception, and she’s saving up her mental manpower for that.

“And he left his date all alone?” Bruce quips, nudging her shoulder.

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, right.”

Bruce sits up straighter. “W-what? You guys aren’t…he stays at the compound sometimes.”

“So does a space raccoon,” Natasha replies. She internally shudders. She loves Steve, she does; she would die for him. She would kill for him. But _date_ him? “Steve and I are not dating. Trust me.”

“I do,” Bruce says softly. He suddenly grasps her hand. “Nat, I just spent the last six months in the lab. It gave me a lot of time to think. It was very lonely, but the one person I kept thinking of, the one person I kept coming back to was _you_.”

Natasha internally sighs. She knew she and Bruce would have to have this conversation eventually. When they first saw each other when he came back to Earth, it was in the middle of the impending threat of Thanos, so they hadn’t had a chance to sit down and talk about what was going on between them. Then after they killed Thanos, Natasha had taken it upon herself to organize the Avengers and act as a liaison between multiple states with mutual allies, and Bruce had holed himself up in his lab.

And now here they were. The Hulk and Black Widow, sitting in the back of the wedding of one of the most famous men on Earth, talking about their relationship struggles. Madame B would definitely have a heart attack if she could see Natasha now.

“I’m not going to say what you want me to, Bruce,” Natasha says evenly. “ _You_ left. Not me. We’re different now. The world is different. It gets to the point where you can’t go back.”

“We can have this,” Bruce insists, pointing to Tony and Pepper, slow dancing in front of the attentive eyes of their guests. “Look how nice this is.”

Natasha remembers fixing Laura’s hair on her wedding day, taking Polaroid pictures with Coulson, drinking too much champagne with Clint.

“I don’t want it,” she says sharply. “I have a job to do. If I stop now, no one else will do it.”

Bruce sadly smiles, as if he’d known what she was going to say all along. Natasha’s shoulders relax, and she covers his hand with her other one. She still can’t believe she once offered to run away with him, can’t imagine being anywhere other than Steve’s side during the firefight that changed the universe.

_I’m running with it, with you. If running’s the plan, as far as you want._

Not anymore.

Bruce stands, says he’s going to get them drinks, and disappears a second later. Natasha pretends not to notice him use the emergency exit door and leave the reception.

She drums her fingers on her empty champagne glass. If she were anyone else, any less comfortable in her own skin, she might tuck her hair behind her ear or slouch to make herself look smaller, affected by the magnitude of being alone at a wedding. But she’s not.

Natasha loves being alone, but hates being lonely. Sometimes, when doing the right thing, it seems like the two are a package deal.

~

Natasha tunes out the argument that has erupted between Loki, Tony, and Gamora. They’re on a SHIELD issued ship, one that she knows is actually one of their worse, older models, yet Fury had still acted like he was giving them one of his own limbs. They’re slowly cruising toward Adam’s vessel to try and negotiate with him.

“The Sovereign are easily offended,” Gamora grits out, not for the first time. “I promise you, there is nothing we or this planet have that they could possibly want. They won’t care that they’re killing us.”

“In both my realities, your father Thanos learned humans weren’t cowering wretches like the rest of the galaxy thought,” Loki counters. His wavy black hair is so dark it almost looks blue. “Adam can come to the same realization. There is something to be said for Midgard. There is something to be said for its people.”

“Where was this energy when you were bringing aliens down to destroy New York?” Tony scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Don’t act like you care about that planet or anything on it. You just want to save your own ass.”

The three of them continue arguing, struggling to reach a conclusion as their ship reaches Adam’s. None of them have noticed that Natasha hasn’t said a word. Gamora had been in favor of using the Pym particles to get them back to their reality but not telling Adam where they were going, leaving him to attack the Earth they left. Surprisingly, Loki had wanted to tell Adam where they were going so the fight wouldn’t be on this reality’s Earth that had nothing to do with Adam. Tony didn’t seem particularly in favor of any plan, just against anything that Loki said.

Natasha sighs to herself. She wishes Steve was here. He had used his Pym particle to go back to Bruce, Sam, and Bucky to soften the blow of his new old age and warn them of the impending attack. They knew for a fact his particle would get him to where he wanted to go; they weren’t sure about the rest of them.

“What if he doesn’t even believe us and attacks this Earth anyway, and then follows us to our reality when he realizes we were telling the truth?” Gamora points out, crossing her arms. “Then Earth in both realities is attacked. Why let both get damaged when just one can?”

Natasha stands suddenly, drawing the attention of her three counterparts.

“Let me go,” she says, her voice low. “I’ll take the solo pod to Adam’s ship.”

“Are you _insane_?” Tony demands.

“Not insane,” Natasha replies, “just persuasive.”

“If you have a plan,” Loki adds, “they’ll cooperate.” He holds her gaze for a minute before turning to Tony. “If Agent Romanoff wishes to try, I see no harm in that. She’s a formidable spy.”

Natasha nods her head in thanks and partly surprise at the god. She readjusts the knives strapped to her thighs and walks over to the pod entrance attached to the ship.

Tony sits back in his seat sulkily. “Good luck,” he mutters.

Natasha gives him what she hopes is a reassuring smile. “I have a plan. Don’t wait for me. Use your particles to get your asses back to our reality. I’ll meet you there.”

Gamora crosses her arms. “What happened to sticking together? Whatever you’re planning, you have to be completely sure it’ll work. These aren’t the human enemies you were facing on Earth. These guys are Sovereign.”

Natasha cocks her head, pressing the button to start closing the pod around herself. She smirks. “So am I.”

~

“We were expecting the Zehoberei warrior, maybe even the Asgardian, but not you,” Adam admits, eyeing Natasha curiously. With disdain or respect, Natasha can’t be sure. “You must take me for a fool if you think I’m going to let this go easily. If you think Ayesha will let this go easily. You illegally use Sovereign technology and—”

“Let’s not forget who granted that to us,” Natasha points out, crossing her arms and standing straight. Facing three Sovereign is more than a little daunting, but she’s not about to let that deter her. “Our deal was made to help each other. We can still help you. You can come to our Earth, our reality, and seek asylum there. We’ll vouch for you.”

“It’s too late for that,” Magus growls.

“Is it?” Natasha counters. “We have particles, made on Earth, that will hopefully help us get back to our own realities. We could have some made for you all—”

“Our DNA might have made you stronger, but it definitely did not make you smarter,” Adam chuckles condescendingly. “We have our own way to get to your reality, Natasha. Don’t you worry about that. We could attack this Earth now and then go to yours and attack again. I could bring balance to two realities.”

Natasha exhales deeply. She doesn’t like the look in Adam’s eyes. It’s an expression she’s seen on too many people before: one consumed by greed and power.

The Goddess steps forward, signaling for Adam and Magus to step aside. She stands tall in front of Natasha, her chin raised, and regards her seriously.

“My goal is to eradicate all sin in the universe,” she states, “and with it, all creatures capable of sin. Whether we attack this Earth or the one of your own reality...you, my dear, should have been eradicated a long time ago.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow, not letting her uneasiness show. “You’ll have to explain to me what you mean, I’m afraid. I’ve been wiping out the red in my ledger. I hope that’s enough to ask that you leave this Earth alone. If you’re going to attack, attack my own reality’s Earth.”

The Goddess chuckles, grinning maniacally, evilly. The expression seems drastically different than how she had appeared when Adam had first introduced her and Magus back on Sovereign.

“Can you? Can you wipe out _that_ much red? Drakov’s daughter? São Paulo? The hospital fire?” The Goddess demands, leaning forward into Natasha’s face, glaring down at her. “Your ledger is dripping. It's gushing red, and you think saving a world no more virtuous than yourself will change anything?”

Natasha resists the urge to smirk. She’s good at catching on to things, and this is a script she knows all too well. A little improvisation won’t hurt, of course, but everything is now on track. Clint would be proud.

“I don’t know if I can save this world,” Natasha admits, her voice breaking. She quickly covers her mouth, as if she’s embarrassed at the display of emotion. “I just mean…we don’t even know if you all can go to my Earth. And this planet here is going to be attacked, with millions of innocent lives lost because of it.”

Adam walks over to her and rests a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he says. “There is a way for us to get to your Earth, and make everything right there instead.” He opens his hand, and the Tesseract materializes out of the air and rests in his palm.

Natasha’s eyes widen. She’d been expecting that Adam had some sort of plan, but she hadn’t been expecting an Infinity Stone. Oh well. She’ll adapt, just like she always has.

“It had been hidden on Sovereign, it turns out,” Adam says, his glee apparent. “I don’t know for how long, but that doesn’t matter now, does it?” He shrugs. “Once I’ve sought justice from you and your friends for making a fool of the Sovereign, I can use this to go anywhere in the universe and bring justice everywhere.”

Natasha secretively taps on her communicator several times, different lengths of time, telling Tony to “go now” in Morse code. A second later, she jumps up onto Adam’s back, swinging her legs around his neck and dropping her weight so that she lands on her feet and he falls on his side, dropping the Tesseract. Magus reaches for Natasha, but she sprints out of the way, appreciating her Sovereign speed, and hits the lever toward the front of their ship, kicking it into motion and throwing Magus off balance.

The Goddess scoops up the Tesseract, but before Natasha can reach forward to grab it from her, Adam is standing in front of her, swinging toward her face. Natasha ducks just in time and kicks his legs out from under it. He grabs her as he falls, and they both tumble to the ground, Adam landing on top of Natasha. She swings her legs around his torso and uses her arms to flip them so that she’s on top and punches him in the face, twice, as hard as she can. He reaches up and grips her neck, beginning to squeeze.

Natasha grabs his hand, trying to pry his fingers apart, to no avail. She manages to knee him in the chest, loosening his grip momentarily, and crawls away, gasping for air. The Goddess is standing right next to her now, partially turned to her, and Natasha reaches up to grab the Tesseract from her.

Magus uses her trick from earlier and punches a button on the front control panel, sending the ship rapidly in the opposite direction it had been flying, and Natasha goes rolling on the floor. She lands next to a large gun and wastes no time in getting to her feet to hold it, aiming it at Magus. She fires, but he dives out of the way, and the blast catches the controls used to control the ship, lighting them on fire.

Adam is back on his feet now, and charges at Natasha. She fires the gun at him and hits him in his shoulder, but it doesn’t slow him down. He hits her in the chest, hard, and she drops the gun. At the same time, an alarm begins blaring throughout the ship.

“Adam, we need to get off this ship!” The Goddess yells. She holds up the Tesseract.

“No, not yet!” Adam snarls.

But the Goddess has already opened a portal in the middle of the ship, and as the ship shakes and begins catching fire around them, Natasha has no choice but to fall into it, along with the Goddess, Magus, and Adam.

She lands hard on a large field of grass and rolls into a somersault to try and soften the blow. The Goddess lands next to her, groaning.

Natasha stumbles over to her and looks down with a steely gaze, holding up her knives, daring the Goddess to say something.

“On the journey here, there were many rocks in the road,” she coughs, materializing into the god of mischief. “Yet it still led to you coming home.”

Natasha breathes a sigh of relief, glad that her instincts were right. She helps Loki to his feet, looking around. The Tesseract landed about twenty feet away from them, but there’s no sign of Adam or Magus anywhere.

“They must’ve landed near here. They can’t be far,” Loki surmises, noticing her looking around. “Where is here, exactly?”

Natasha studies their surroundings. It’s just trees and mountains as far as she can see.

“I’m not sure,” Natasha answers. “I’d have to find a more significant landmark to be able to tell. Somewhere in the Midwest United States.”

Loki’s expression makes his disdain clear, but at least he doesn’t say anything. Natasha considers that progress.

Natasha fiddles with her comm unit. When it stops producing static, she speaks into it. “Tony? Gamora?”

A moment later, the unit statics, and then Tony’s voice is heard, loud and clear. Natasha’s knees buckle with relief, and she sits on the ground as Tony talks.

“Nat, we fucking _did_ it. We’re back!” he rambles excitedly. “Holy shit! I gotta say, I didn’t know if we’d be able to pull this off, but we did. Go us. We definitely deserve a vacation after this. How did you all get back? Loki’s with you, right? He just sort of disappeared on us.”

“He’s with me,” Natasha answers. “Long story short, Adam had the Tesseract. He’s here somewhere too. We’re somewhere in the Midwest, near the Mississippi, if I had to guess. Where did you land?”

“Outside DC,” Tony answers. “We’ve already made contact with Steve, and he’s warned Sam, Bucky, and Bruce. We’re going to take the ship up to New York soon. You think you can lead Adam here?”

“If we go quickly, he’ll follow,” Loki says. “This is now twice we’ve duped him. He won’t take that lightly.”

“Okay. I’ll work on transportation, and meet you guys there,” Natasha says. “See you soon.”

“Roger that.”

She rests her head on her knees. She can’t believe they made it back. It’s an overwhelming feeling; she feels like she hasn’t gotten to take a break for the longest time, and the fight’s still not over. There’s no time to waste.

She gets back up to her feet and looks at Loki. “Well, let’s get a move on. Try and find some civilization before Adam finds us.”

The two of them trek through some woods for a few minutes when Natasha pauses, sensing something. Loki looks around.

Suddenly, an arrow lands in the tree directly behind him, missing his ear by just millimeters. Loki jumps to the side, his head whipping back to look at the arrow, and Natasha steps in front of him quickly, raising her hands to show they mean no harm to the shooter.

That’s a difficult thing to do when you’re facing someone who was once brainwashed by Loki, but Natasha’s ambitious.

Clint Barton is glaring at them, another arrow notched and ready to fly. His arm muscles are tensed, almost vibrating with raw energy, with pure anger.

“What the fuck is this?” he screams, his voice shaking. His mouth is quivering, and his eyes are watering, but the arrow doesn’t move an inch. Natasha knows that arrow could be plunged through both hers and Loki’s hearts if she isn’t careful about what she says next.

“I hope you told them yourself,” Natasha says, raising her chin, referencing the last conversation they had together on Vormir.

Clint takes a deep breath. “Shut up. Shut _up_. I watched you fall to your death. The red floating guy said that was irreversible.”

“It was,” Natasha agrees. “It happened. But that wasn’t the end.”

Clint still doesn’t let go of his bow and arrow, but his muscles relax obviously, some of the anger and tension disappearing. “Why is he here?”

“I needed him to get back,” Natasha answers truthfully.

“You should’ve killed him the second you saw him.”

“I thought about it,” Natasha says, ignoring Loki’s indignant scoff behind her. “But I don’t judge people on their worst mistakes. _We_ don’t.”

She sees Clint consider what she’s saying. A minute later, he lowers his weapon slightly, but she knows he could still shoot both herself and Loki and kill them in less than a second if he changed his mind.

“How do I know it’s really you?” he asks, and his voice sounds so worn down, so tired, so unlike Clint, that it almost breaks Natasha’s heart, the same heart that Clint and his family helped fix.

Natasha slowly walks over to him. She stands directly in front of him, and he looks down at her. They stare into each other’s eyes for a long time, neither one moving, until Natasha gives him a small smirk, remembering a story only the two of them know.

“Glasgow, August, 2006,” she says quietly so Loki can’t hear. “Coulson didn’t know the popsicles he’d bought had Everclear in them and got wasted and went swimming in the River Clyde. We had to bring our mark to the river to kill him and then get Coulson out.”

Clint chuckles at the memory. He reaches out his right hand and Natasha grasps it with her left. They both grin at each other, knowing that Clint knew it was really Natasha the second she opened her mouth, and just wanted to hear that story again.

“It’s good to have you back,” he whispers, his eyes tearing up. Natasha hates that hers tear up too, the traitorous organs. “There was so much I still had to say to you.”

“Save it,” Natasha tells him, her lips quirking up. “Hope you stretched, old man. We’ve got a fight coming our way.”

“Yeah? Where at?” Clint asks, always ready to fight, one of the reasons Natasha loves him. “Hopefully not Budapest.”

“You wish,” Natasha teases. Then her gaze sobers. “New York. Can you get us there?”

Clint nods. He glances up at Loki. “We can’t just leave him here?”

Natasha hits his arm. “I’ve got a lot to tell you about, too. But first, we have to fight.”

“What’s the fight about?”

_You’re a spy, not a soldier. Now you want to wade into a war. Why?_

“There’s still some red,” she answers carefully. She thinks about her journey here, about how she’s changed. She gives Clint a reassuring smile and squeezes his hand. “And a little bit of gold, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait!! Work has just been draining me every day so I didn't get to write as much as I normally do but wanted to get this knocked out before this week starts back up. Also, I just want to reiterate, I know there's a couple quotes directly from the MCU in this story, but I am not making any profit off this! Thank you to those who read this story. Until the next chapter :)


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So unfortunately, I didn’t complete this before FFH came out (if you haven’t seen it yet, GO!) like I had originially planned, but it doesn’t affect the story too much. Let’s just pretend that instead of being dead, Tony is busy with Pepper and Morgan :)

Natasha readjusts the knives strapped to her thighs as she exits the Quinjet that had been parked at the Bartons’ farm. Clint steps out behind her, followed by Loki, who had been handcuffed at Clint’s insistence.

Laura exits last, wrapping her cardigan around herself tightly, chewing her bottom lip. She was going to fly the Quinjet back to the farm after dropping off the other three. She had insisted on learning how to pilot it after the Avengers had stayed over. Clint had been hesitant about it, so Natasha had done it instead.

Although with the way Laura’s acting now, Natasha is worried she’ll forget that that happened. The brunette had been shocked to see Natasha, but other than a brief hug, she had stayed silent for the entire ride to New York.

Clint and Laura briefly kiss each other and hug tightly. Natasha’s breath catches in her throat as she watches them, two of the people she cares most about this world, and can’t believe she almost lost them for good. She forces herself to look away for a second to give them privacy and catches Loki eyeing her curiously.

When the couple pulls apart, Natasha steps towards Laura, giving her a friendly smirk. “No goodbye for me?”

Laura regards her seriously. Without looking away from Natasha’s eyes, she says, “Babe, give me and Nat a minute, please?”

Clint gives Natasha a somewhat apologetic grimace as he shoves Loki in front of him, the two men walking away to give Laura and Natasha some privacy.

“You _died_ , Nat,” Laura whispers, tears forming in her eyes. “We mourned you. The kids didn’t go to school for the last few weeks of the school year. I…” She shakes her head, looking away into the distance. “Clint told me how it happened. After everything the three of us have been through together…” She shakily laughs, the tears flowing freely down her cheeks now. “You thought you could just leave.”

Natasha inhales sharply. She had known that Laura would be sad about her death, but she didn’t expect her to be _mad_. After all, the choice was between her or Clint.

“Don’t tell me that you were the better choice over Clint, or I swear to God, I’ll kill you myself for good this time,” Laura sniffles. She looks at Natasha, suddenly the most serious she’s been in years. “I know what Clint did during those five years. If he hadn’t told me, I would’ve found out by the news. Now that government agencies and law enforcement have their numbers back up, there’s an international hunt for the masked killer known as Ronin. He’s estimated to have killed over two hundred people.”

Natasha furrows her brows in worry. If the world is looking for Clint, that not only puts Laura and the kids at risk, but also all of their friends who knew Clint was Ronin.

“We’ll be okay,” Laura says firmly after noticing Natasha’s expression. “I’m just saying…I’m extremely glad my husband is alive. I am. I became indebted to you a long time ago, Nat. You dying so Clint doesn’t have to is immeasurable. I’ll always owe you. But I’m allowed to be angry that you fought to die instead of someone who just killed two hundred people.”

“I don’t judge people on their worst mistakes,” Natasha replies quietly. “You two didn’t.”

“The best decision we ever made,” Laura chuckles, pulling Natasha in for a hug. “We have a lot to figure out. But that will all come later.” She unwraps herself from the hug and rests her hands on Natasha’s shoulders. “Go save the world. And come back home. _Both_ of you.”

~

Natasha had never considered herself particularly well-liked. She had a very small handful of people she would consider friends, and that was fine with her. She’d never been raised to believe that having many friends or a large following was desirable.

But looking around Times Square now, Natasha can’t help but wonder if she’s been missing something her whole life.

All around, the screens on every building and large billboards and posters everywhere are not only celebrating the return of half of the population, but also the Avengers, and most specifically, commemorating herself and Tony. Natasha sees a car with a bumper sticker that reads, _Honk if Natasha Romanoff saved your life!_

When an old picture of her and Tony together in 2012 displays across the Times Square MEGA Screen, Natasha can’t help but grin. Accompanying the picture is the caption, _A decade as Avengers. Many more in our hearts. To Iron Man and the Black Widow – thank you._

Natasha’s awe at the declarations of thanks and love is not matched by Okoye, however. The Wakandan had been sent to Times Square to meet Natasha, Clint, and Loki and take them to the Avengers Compound.

“Americans,” she says with disdain, glancing around at the bright billboards. “So… _loud_.”

“Loud, but dumb,” Natasha agrees, looking around. The supposedly dead Black Widow, Hawkeye, Black Panther’s head of Wakanda’s armed forces, and the god who once tried to destroy New York are all standing in the center of Times Square, and no one is paying them any attention. “We haven’t been spotted yet. Let’s get a move on and keep it that way.”

“Remind me again why we couldn’t simply get flown in to the compound,” Loki says as Okoye ushers them to an empty alleyway where a sleek black car is parked.

“Remind _me_ , are you supposed to be talking?” Clint snaps, pushing Loki into the backseat.

He looks at Natasha, and the two of them both blurt, “Shotgun!” at the same time.

“Children,” Okoye mutters. “Barton, get in the front seat before you murder the Asgardian. Apologies, Nat.”

Natasha shakes her head good-naturedly and slides into the backseat with Loki. “Clint didn’t want Laura anywhere near the compound,” she explains. “Plus, Tony already set the defense system up so that anything larger than one of his suits is going to be shot at. Okoye was in Times Square anyway, for…”

“A meeting with some members of the United Nations,” Okoye answers, turning on the car. “Acclimating a country to suddenly having previously dead citizens is a difficult task. When Captain Rogers called, T’Challa left to go to the compound before I did.”

“How fast can this thing go, exactly?” Clint asks as Okoye starts the car. “The compound’s at least two hours away with traffic, and we’re trying not to be seen.”

“The Princess Shuri has been very eager the past couple of weeks to make up for the five years she was gone,” Okoye answers cryptically. “This is one of her newest inventions.”

“She made a car?” Clint asks, in the same tone he might question a fellow parent about their kids’ sports team. “That’s pretty cool, actually.”

Natasha smirks to herself. She’d only met Shuri once before, but she’d given Bruce a run for his money, so she knows they won’t be disappointed now.

Okoye enters coordinates into the car. A minute later, the car begins buzzing rapidly, and smoke pours from the back of the car. Natasha tightly grabs onto the car door. She trusts Okoye with her life, she does, but the state of the vehicle isn’t very comforting.

Natasha’s breath catches in her throat as the car immediately lurches forward and spins. Her vision blacks out for a second to adjust to the speed at which they just moved, and she rolls down the window while staring at the floor to get some fresh air.

“About time,” a voice that sounds suspiciously like Tony Stark chirps from outside.

Natasha slowly turns her head. Outside the window is Iron Man himself, standing outside of the Avengers Compound.

Natasha’s shock is evident in her silence. Just a second ago they’d been in the middle of Times Square. Okoye smirks, her pride in Shuri’s apparent teleportation device clear.

“I must say, that was impressive, for a Midgardian invention,” Loki muses, exiting the car. He stares up at the Compound, with its dark steel defense system already intact and prepared.

Okoye barely spares him a glance as she begins walking toward the front entrance, where a group of people is gathered.

“The defense system is up and in place so the interior can’t get any worse, but it was pretty beat up after the fight,” Tony explains as they begin walking toward the group. “It’s going to be a little bit before everything is back to the way it was.”

“Maybe it doesn’t need to be,” Natasha muses. She jostles Tony’s shoulder. “We were in _space_ on alien planets. If that’s not inspiration for a new compound, I don’t know what is.”

As they reach the group, everyone falls silent. Natasha knows Tony has already been here for some time and reunited with everyone, and she wishes she could have witnessed Pepper’s reaction, and she knows everyone would have been ecstatic to have him back. For herself, she had expected only a handful of people to actually be emotional at her return.

She was wrong. She’s not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.

“Natasha!” Wanda breathes, the first one to break the silence. The witch flies forward, wrapping her arms tightly around Natasha’s neck. “I’m so sorry…the last thing we ever did was argue about me and Vis being late. I thought I would never get a chance to fix it.”

At this revelation, Natasha feels her eyes watering. For her, that had been over five years ago, something long forgotten, but for Wanda, it had been just a few weeks ago.

Natasha squeezes her back tightly, desperately trying to keep her voice from wavering. “It’s okay, Wanda. It’s okay. All that matters is that we got you back. We got everyone back.”

Wanda pulls away from her, looking seriously into her eyes. “ _You_ got everyone back, Natasha. Without you, none of us would be here.” She steps back, gesturing to the group of people behind her.

Natasha looks around in awe. People she’d only heard about and had never gotten to meet, like Dr. Strange or Peter Quill, are standing together, staring at her and Tony with mixed reactions of surprise and respect. Natasha would be lying if she said she doesn’t appreciate it.

“Look who’s finally here!” Tony says, clapping his hands once and gesturing to Natasha. “The Black Widow herself, ladies and gentlemen, and…tree and raccoon, Natasha Romanoff.”

The next few minutes are spent exchanging hello’s and hugs, but Natasha knows this giddy feeling isn’t meant to last. After hugging Thor, Natasha steps back and clears her throat.

“I’m not sure how much Tony and Gamora got to tell you all,” she says, “but there’s a being from a planet called Sovereign coming here called Adam Warlock. He somehow split himself into two more entities, called Magus and the Goddess. They’re fast, and they’re strong, and they’re smart.”

“And they’re down one,” Loki adds, the first time he’s spoken since arrival. It seems as if people are noticing him for the first time. Natasha watches as Thor furrows his eyebrows. “I took care of the Goddess whilst still in space, so it will be just Adam and Magus. Their goal is to rid the world of all evil, including potential evils, which in turn, includes all of us. But there’s a lot more of them than us. I believe—”

“You believe what?” Thor interrupts, marching forward. He stops directly in front of Loki, chest heaving. He points to his brother’s chest. “You…have died…in front of me countless times now, Loki. Why are we to believe your lies?” He grabs a fistful of Loki’s shirt. “Is any of this even real? Is that truly Tony and Natasha? Are you even my brother?”

Loki glances down at Thor’s protruding stomach. “Are you even _my_ brother? It seems the years have not been kind to you. The last I saw you, you were fit and strong, assisting Tony on the floor of the Stark Tower lobby. What hap—”

“What?” Thor inhales, turning to face Tony and Natasha. “This is…”

“Still your brother,” Natasha answers cautiously. “Just…from an alternate reality.”

“Yeah, us traveling through time to fix our reality messed with a couple of others,” Tony adds. “Surprise, surprise. It’s a darned shame no one warned us not do it, but—”

“The repercussions of that will show their hands eventually,” Dr. Strange interrupts. He nods at the sky. “But first, we’ve got incoming.”

Everyone follows his gaze. Natasha swears to herself when she sees Adam’s ship fly in above the Compound.

“This will be easy,” Thor claims confidently, reaching out his hand to the sky. A moment later, Stormbreaker flies into his grip. “Two of them against the entirety of us. They don’t stand a chance.”

Tony’s uncharacteristic silence makes Natasha whip her head towards him. “Tony, Adam’s about to try and blow us to smithereens in the next thirty seconds, so if you have something to tell us, say it _now_.”

“Okay, okay!” Tony says, holding up his hands innocently. He sighs. “This isn’t definite, but…Bruce is inside with Steve, Rocket, Sam, and Rhodey, because…I don’t think the Compound is fully healed, I guess you could say. One hard hit to it and everything within a mile radius of here could be blown up. Including us.”

“ _Healed?_ ” Quill scoffs, earning him an elbow to the stomach from Gamora. After wincing, he shakes his head and looks back at Tony. “It’s a big, ugly building, not a living creature. I thought you said these defense systems would…defend…really well.”

“This building is stacked with artificial intelligence and labs full of chemicals you could never dream of,” Tony counters. “It was destroyed by the guy who managed to kill _half of all living things_. So, yes, Dancing Queen, it needs to heal. It’s vulnerable.”

Natasha eyes the ship again. Not letting the Compound get seriously damaged is definitely a barrier, but she’s fought with worse odds before and come out alive. Most of the time.

On instinct, she nearly opens her mouth to tell Steve to call out the play before remembering that not only is he inside and not in proximity to the fight, but he’s also over one hundred years old and physically wouldn’t be much help. That’s going to take a lot of getting used to, especially now that they’re home.

_Home._ Natasha likes the sound of that. She’s not going to let this go that easily.

“Alright,” she says, mainly to Tony, but she’s surprised when everyone quiets and looks attentively to her. She supposes sacrificing your life will earn you a legitimate leadership role with the people you died to save. “Thor’s right. We’ve got a hell of a lot of hitters with us. Don’t underestimate Adam and Magus, but…” She gives everyone a small smirk. “If everyone gets a turn showing off a party trick, I’m not being too cocky when I say I think we’ve got this.”

Natasha doesn’t possess Steve’s giddy optimism, as Tony has labeled it, but she tries not to think negatively about her own odds when in a fight. She’s good at being unbiased, something she desperately needed to be in the Red Room, when you could be forced to choose which girls got to wake up in the morning and which ones would never wake again. The chances of them winning this fight against Adam and Magus are high. That’s a fact.

The ship halts suddenly, and a beam of light bursts out from the bottom of the ship. A second later, Adam and Magus appeared below the ship, and began stalking toward the group.

Clint grabs Natasha’s hand suddenly. They’ve held hands countless times before, but she thinks this might be the most desperate, the most rushed, it’s ever felt.

“I already lost you once before. I’m not losing you again,” he grits out, softly enough for only her to hear. His black tinted sunglasses make it seem like he’s studying Adam, but Natasha knows that he’s looking earnestly into her own eyes. “Go inside. _Please_.”

“We’re not fighting over this again,” Natasha murmurs. “We can both do this now. It’s not one or the other. We’re a team.”

“I think good ol’ STD disbanded around the time its handler died and then came back to life,” Clint chuckles, but there’s no humor in his voice.

“Would it seriously make you feel better if I went and hid inside?” Natasha asks, exasperated.

Clint’s eyebrows raise in surprise. “W-what…yes. Yes! You know it would.”

“Well, too bad.”

Adam continues to march toward them. Without warning, Thor bellows loudly, and the white, wispy clouds in the sky transform into angry, dark storm clouds. Thunder rumbles in the distance, and lightning crackles, lighting up Stormbreaker. An aura of raw power and strength emits from the god, and it’s enough to make Loki sputter and Adam halt in his footsteps.

That split second is all they need. Dr. Strange’s cape flies him up in the air, and strong, fiery orange whips emit from his hands. He controls them to wrap around both Adam’s and Magus’s necks. Some of the other group rush toward Magus and the ship itself to destroy it, and Natasha figures there’s enough people covering those two items so that she can focus all of her attention on Adam.

She channels her anger at him into something productive and delivers a swift uppercut to his jaw. Her Sovereign strength makes him stagger back, and she uses this opportunity to climb up his back and wrap her thighs around his neck, choking him.

Tony and Pepper, both in their suits, fly in front of Adam. Tony uses the beams to fire at Adam’s legs. The blast makes him wobble, but his gold skin seems to be an extraordinary defense barrier.

Natasha takes one of the knives strapped to her thigh and plunges it into Adam’s neck, making him howl with pain. He twists suddenly, flinging her off of his back. More people rush in to attack him.

By the time she stands up, both Adam and Magus are subdued. Natasha would be lying to herself if she said she hadn’t been expecting more of a fight. Compared to the Time Heist missions, this seems extremely anticlimactic.

But it also feels _safe_ , something she hasn’t felt in a long time. For once, she doesn’t feel like there’s a threat around the corner, or that she has to lose sleep for the next month to take care of an issue.

“What do you want to do with them, Natasha?” Gamora asks.

“Once the Compound is finished, we can set up a state-of-the-art prison. It can make Guantanamo Bay look like summer camp,” Tony suggests, his hand raised at Adam, ready to blast again at any second. “Just say the word, Nat.”

“I don’t like the idea of them here alive,” Clint counters. He nods his head toward Loki. “Hell, I don’t even like him here. Send them somewhere else. It’s not our job to take them.”

“But it is our duty,” Wanda argues. “I was viewed by many as a criminal. What if you all had killed me instead of—”

“Stop.”

They fall silent at the harshness in Natasha’s voice. The argument seems too similar to when the Avengers broke apart over the Sokovia Accords, and Natasha is not about to let her family be broken apart again, especially over a threat that she helped bring to them.

“Adam and Magus were willing to kill this whole planet, if they needed to. Potential evil,” Natasha explains, looking at Wanda. “The situation is vastly different than yours. We can’t risk this.” She turns to face the whole group. “They were going to kill us. They die.”

Loki grabs her arm. “If you do this,” he warns her quietly, “it will send a message to the rest of the universe. They may not react to the message, but it will be there.”

“And what would that message be?” Natasha asks, looking up at him curiously.

“That you are a fierce leader, one not to be messed with. That you are a force to be reckoned with, someone others should fear,” Loki answers.

“I am.”

“There could be dangerous consequences to your actions,” he continues. “Believe me, I have firsthand experience in that department.”

“Thank you for your concern,” Natasha tells him. “But this is done.” She nods her head, and Thor raises Stormbreaker, beheading Magus, and Dr. Strange uses the orange whips to do the same to Adam.

Natasha stares at the lifeless bodies in shock for a moment, flashing back to the same thing happening with Thanos over five years ago. She senses the same familiar feelings of despair and guilt, of accomplishment and relief.

She realizes how tired she is. She hadn’t really rested during the five years after the snap, and while everyone may have gotten to after bringing everyone back, she had been working on getting home.

Clint must sense her sudden shift of energy, because he rushes over to catch her when her suddenly jelly legs collapse. He walks her over to the nearest bench, and she gratefully leans her head on his shoulder. The two of them watch the rest of the group begin cleaning and patching each other up, and someone makes a call for the others inside to come out.

There’s a sense of community and rebuilding that Natasha hasn’t felt in a long time. It’s a bit unsettling, but definitely welcome. She sighs, satisfied for now. She’s too tired to think about anything else.

“We’ll Skype the kids in a minute. They’re going to be thrilled,” Clint tells her, grinning. He wraps an arm around her shoulder. “Man, the whole world is going to be thrilled. What a legend. Died to save everyone, and managed to save yourself too and come home. I mean, what’s going through your mind?”

Natasha smiles.

“On the way here, there were many rocks in the road,” she answers, looking up at the sky. “And I’m so thankful that somehow, it led to me coming home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured this was a good ending spot! I love Natasha and her character, and I will definitely be writing more about her in the future. Maybe even possibly a second work to this, who knows! Thank you and much love to everyone who read this, commented, left kudos, and showed support - it means the world. Until next time, stay icy. :)


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